
LAKES 




RAYMOND Sf SPEARS 



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Book Sn±_ 

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COPYRIGHT DEPosrr. 



A TRIP ON THE GREAT 
LAKES 



A Trip on the Great Lakes 



Description of a Trip, Summer, 1912, by a Skiff 

Traveler, Who Loves "Outdoors." Tells 

of Fish, Fur, Game and Other 

Things of Interest 



BY 

RAYMOND S. SPEARS 



Published by 
A. R. HARDING 

COLUMBUS. OHIO 



Copyright, 1913 

A. R. HARDING 

Publisher 



©CU;}5086 9 



CONTENTS 

Chapter. Page. 

I. The Start From Black River ........ 15 

II. Canadian Customs 23 

III. In the Bay of Quinte . 35 

IV. Working My Way up Lake Huron , . 51 

V. Perils of the Great Lakes . . 63 

VI. Canada's Fish License 72 

VII. A Region of Big Game .......... 85 

VIII. In the Fishermen's Camp 95 

IX. A Day With the Berry Pickers ...... 103 

X. North Shore Game Overseers ....... 112 

XI. A Desolate Abode . . .' 120 

XII. A Small Rifle Country 134 

XIII. North Shore Fur Pockets No. 1 — A Trapper Pirate . 147 

XIV. North Shore Fur Pockets No. 2— A Valuable Black Fox 155 
XV. North Shore Fur Pockets No. B — Twelve Silver Foxes 161 

XVI. North Shore Fur Pockets No. 4 — Eleven Mink at Once 167 

XVII. Great Lakes Small Boats . . . 174 

XVIII. Great Lakes Motor Boats ,183 

XIX. Great Lakes Fishermen . . . 191 

XX. Great Lakes Fishing ...,..,... 202 



(o) 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

Ready to Start 16 

Leaving Dexter, N. Y., Astern 18 

Tibbitt's Point Light 24 

Off for the Motor Boat Races 26 

On the St. Lawrence 36 

Three Brothers Islands Light 38 

My Row Boat 40 

A Bay of Qiiinte Camp 43, 

Through the Welland Canal 45 

Deck Hand on a Tow Barge 52 

The Tow Barge 54 

Thunder Cape 66 

A North Shore Fishing Boat 68 

Emil Young of Hare Island 79 

The Rocky North Shore of Superior 83 

The Magnet Island Camp 89 

Shaganash Island Light . 91 

Black Dock 93 

The Black Dock Family 99 

Frank Dampier Towed Me In 104 

Port Coldwell 110 

Will Dampier's Tug 114 

Otter Island Light 117 

A Trapper's Bark Wigwam 122 

CO 



8 Illustkatioxs. 

Page 

A North Shore Camp 130 

A North Shore Grave 135 

The Michipicoten Dock 139 

The Skiff 176 

The Punt • .... 178 

The Yawl 180 

Motor Boat Skiffs 187 

The Fisherman's Dock 192 

Dressing a Lake Trout 194 

Loading Fish Boxes 190 

Fisherman's Cabin and Drying Reel 199 

Dipping Up Minnows 203 

Drawing the Minnow Seine 206 

In the Gill Net ... 208 

The Net Raiser 210 



MAPS 

Page 

The Trip Along Lake Ontario 32-33 

The Route From Buffalo to Detroit . 48-49 

The Route Along Lake Huron 58-59 

The Lake Superior Route ........... 74-75 

The Return Trip Along Lake Superior ....... 124-125 

Lake Michigan 142-143 

(9) 



THE V^HY OF THIS LITTLE BOOK 

TRAVELING is always a complex af- 
fair; it means time, money, bother 
and doubts; on tlie other hand it 
means experience,, novelty, ex- 
hilaration and profit — the problem is to 
make the income greater than the outgo. 
The story that I tell in this little series of 
chapters considers many problems in a light 
and almost careless sort of way. It is a nar- 
rative of actual experiences throughout, 
and to find the problems answered may take 
a little figuring on the reader's oavu hook. 
If I should put down in plain English a 
Ijlain answer to the question. Should I go 
traveling?, it would be that any one who 
desires may do so, but whether an individual 
ought to go is quite another matter; each 
must answer for himself. 

I sought in this narrative to show how 
very simple it is to go traveling. With a 
little rowboat, a little something to eat, a 
few odds and ends of supplies — waterproof 
cloth, hatchet, matches, etc. — one has the 
materials necessary to make a long and in- 
teresting journey. 

(11) 



The Why of This Little Book. 

There is only one simpler way of "going 
somewhere" than on a roAvboat trip, and 
that is walking. Once upon a time I walked 
upAvards of a thousand miles straightway 
from Utica, N. Y., to Old Virginia, with all 
my outfit in an Adirondack pack basket, 
and thence I paddled down many hundreds 
of miles of river into Alabama; and again., 
I rowed down the Mississippi River 1200 
miles or so in rowboat and shanty-boats ; so 
this little book, in so far as it tells how the 
traveling was done, comes from a consid- 
erable ripeness of experience and oppor- 
tunity. I have been frank in my narrative, 
and many an old timer may see things he 
would have done differently ; I knew better, 
in some instances ; usually, it is much more 
interesting to do things the wrong way than 
to do them according to the best of au- 
thorities. 

Many a man and especially many a 
youth, is deterred from undertaking some 
longed-for journey because of the expense, 
or the dread of catastrophe, or just mere 
lack of confidence. I never went any where 
yet that I didn't feel handicapped by the 
lack of money, the shadow of doubt as to 
whether or not I ought to go. I had ample 
excuse for not making any trip I ever un- 



The Why of This Little Book. 13 

dertook. On the other hand, by going, pre- 
pared to do any kind of work that might be 
needful to pay my way, I have done very 
well in making money go many miles. I 
should say that four cents a mile is enough 
to pay all one's expenses; to put it another 
way, from fifty cents to f2.00 a day. The 
cost depends on the man. 

One should be able to trip the Missis- 
sippi, the Ohio,, the Great Lakes, any skiff 
waters, going hundreds, or thousands of 
miles for less than |200. This means a three 
or four months, or six months trip. If one 
earns his own way, all he needs is enough 
to buy a skiff and supplies, and then the 
heart to cut loose and go, let come what 
may. 

Nothing terrible ever really does happen, 
unless one is foolish, taking unnecessary 
chances, or looks for trouble by yielding 
to the countless temptations that advertise 
each in its own way. Every one is kind to 
the wayfarer; only once or twice has my 
confidence ever been betrayed, and then it 
really didn't matter, as in the case of the 
man who picked my p>ocket at Memphis ; no 
doubt he needed the mone}^ more than I did.. 

If some one takes courage from what he 
reads in this little book, and goes forth with 



14 The Why of This Little Book. 

a good coiis(Mence — leaving no great duty 
Ix'liiiid liiiii — and enjoys some days and* 
nights alone with the Great Outdoors, or 
finds here a better way of living for a while,, 
then I am quite content to have been of that 
much service. 

In any event, I've had the fun of the trip 
and the pleasure of writing about it ; I hope 
no Socialist will accuse me of not trying to 
divide up the good times that I have had. 

E. S. S. 
February, 1913. 



A TRIP ON THE GREAT LAKES 

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Start From Black River. 

FOR a good many years I have been longing to make a trip 
on one of the Great Lakes. I had had glimpses of Lake 
Erie on two or three occasions, and a faint memory of 
life on the shore of that lake when I was a boy. The 
thought of going in some, kind of a little craft around the 
coast of one of the fresh water seas came whenever I looked at a 
map showing any of them, but it was not till last summer that my 
opportunity came. 

Then I determined to take an outing of some kind, and at last 
I saw my way clear to realizing on my dream of a Great Lake trip. 
My intention was to go up on Lake Ontario and have a rowboat trip 
along its shores, of which I knew nothing at all. Then if there was 
time, I would make a few miles along the north shore of Lake Erie. 
I bought a double v/ool blanket, a folding cot, several ten cent 
cooking utensils — a pail, frying pan, knives, forks, spoons, plates, 
etc., and packed them into a $2.00 camp chest, and started on July 
17 for Jefferson county, New York, with my mind only half 'made 
up about what I should do in the way of an outing. In Jefferson 
county, I have relatives at Carthage, Black River, Philadelphia, Felts 
Mills, and Cape Vincent, and more relatives at Pulaski, some of whom 
I had not seen in fifteen or twenty years, and some of whom I had 
never seen. I made up my mind to see them all. 

15 



16 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




The Start From Black River. 17 

Uncle George, on his way home from a G. A. R. encampment, 
came off the cars at Little Falls a few days before I started, and he 
said I shouldn't be in any hurry to buy my skiff, for he knew a man 
at Black River who had built a skiff for his own use, and had never 
had it in the water — Fd better look at it before buying anywhere. 
Now Black River is about 15 miles from the lake, and I wasn't 
quite sure that anybody fifteen miles from big water would build a 
boat that I should care to go afloat in where the wind has a clean 
sweep of 150 miles or so, but I wouldn't hurt Uncle George's feel- 
ings by saying so, for anything, 

I had to go to see Cousin Min, and Kate and Aunt Anne, and 
Smiley — all the folks, and had two or three weeks in which to 
make up my mind. Well, I went and saw the relatives — and about 
everybody knows what lots of fun that is, especially if one has a 
Cousin Ernest, and Ernest is a game protector on his job. I began 
to get outdoors at Felts Mills, with Ernest, and saw the other 
Chamberlain boys whooping along the road on a motor cycle — 70 
miles an hour ! They go eleven miles to Carthage to get a shave 
tefore breakfast, and go courting girls all the way from Lowville 
to Pulaski, two hundred miles or so — they go fishing, two at once, 
on the motor cycle, and hunt gray squirrels and grouse and other 
game all over Northern New York, riding on that motor cycle; 
moreover they go to Watertown mornings to work, and home at 
night. I wished they'd write up their real experiences hunting and 
fishing on motor cycles, but 'That's nothing!" That's the way with 
people who know all about any thing! 

In due course, I got to Uncle George's at Black River, and he 
took me up to a little frame work shop, and there, covered with 
burlap and a buffalo robe was the boat, which Mr. Keppler had built. 
It M^as 16 feet long, 16 inches deep, sharp at both ends, 42 inches 
wide amidships, triple painted and the gunwale strakes of natural 
oak wood, varnished with spar varnish, rock elm ribs and basswood 
planking — just as pretty a boat as ever I laid eyes on. 

I had expected to pay about $25 or $30 for a secondhand boat, 
but I couldn't get $40 down on this boat too suddenly, for it was 

2 



18 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




The Start From Black River. 19 

of beautiful model, fit to ride any waves I'd be likely to dare or be 
caught sleeping by. With my boat purchased, my outfit on hand, and 
everything settled for a rov^ on Lake Ontario, I sauntered around 
among my relatives some more and so used up a few days more of 
time. I was just going to trip around Lake Ontario, understand. 

Well, on July 30, I was ready to set the boat afloat. My start 
was made on James Simser's one horse wagon, out of Black River. 
I had unpacked and shipped my camping chest and rifle back home. 

I'd better tell about that rifle. It's a 25-20 trombone Marhn 
which I got a year ago. I intended to take it into Canada with me, 
and enter it at the customs, and not take out any hunting license 
because I had no intention of shooting any game — I've been a game 
protector myself, and don't propose to break any game laws. At 
the last minute, I reasoned with myself: "If I take the rifle to 
Canada, I may be badly tempted, or some game overseer may be 
tempted to get some money out of me, or any one of many things 
may happen." So I shipped the rifle back home, and did not regret 
it more than forty or fifty times. I don't know what would have 
happened — probably nothing. But in practice, as in New York, some 
protectors arrest a man for carrying a gun, whether he is hunting 
or just going out to shoot at a mark, and this is a shameful viola- 
tion of the Constitution which says the right to bear arms shall not 
be infringed upon. To save a few paltry head of game — to save 
a little work on the part of protectors, every man who carries a gun 
a-field without a hunting license is liable to be arrested and fined. 

Well, I shipped the rifle back home, and when I started from 
Black River in a wagon, I had no firearm with me. We rode on 
the wagon to Dexter, through Watertown, to the mouth of Black 
river. At Dexter there is a dock, and from this dock, we launched 
the skiflf and I loaded my duffle into it. Then I went to a grocery 
and bought supplies — bacon, butter, crackers, canned soups, and so 
on. After a luncheon at a restaurant, I bade Simser good-bye and 
bent to the oars. Before bending, the local boat livery man called 
attention to sundry defects in the arrangement of the boat. 



20 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

Now there are some things about every craft which need shift- 
ing and changing to bring them into tune with one's own personality. 
Already I had begun to make changes. When one has an Uncle 
who can do anything with carpenter tools, files and machinery, why 
not have things fixed right according to one's own and one's Uncle's 
ideas? 

The original oar locks were Y-shaped, with pins through the 
oars, holding the blades perpendicular, so they presented the broad 
surface to the wind on the recovery, and holding the boat back by 
that much resistance. I wanted my oars free in the locks so they 
could be turned edge to the wind on recovery — feathered, as they 
say. I bought a pair of brass locks — the only kind I could get of 
the style I wanted, and Uncle George rabbited the sockets into the 
other locks to get the right size of holes. I put three brass cleats 
on the boat, so that when I came to put up my waterproofed muslin, 
I'd have something to tie the lines to. I had 100 feet of half-inch 
rope, large enough to hold a forty foot launch, and later I swapped 
that off for f inch rope. Uncle George made me two basswood 
hoops, to go over the boat, on which to draw the cover under which 
I expected to sleep more or less with the boat swinging at' anchor in 
sheltered nooks. He leathered the oars, too. 

The liveryman said I ought to row the boat backwards and 
raise the seats a little higher — and always, it is worth while listen- 
ing to advice, whether one takes the advice or not. Sometimes advice 
is better than one's own inspiration, 

I couldn't change the seats myself just then, so I pulled down 
Black River toward Black River Bay. As I rounded the first bend 
and found myself among the islands, afloat on the black water, 
there came such a feeling of relief as outdoor folks all know. It 
was just one great big burst of exhuberance and delight on being so 
close to nature, so free from conventions, so encompassed by the sky 
and water. 

It had been several years since I had sat at the oars of a boat, 
and I wondered how long it would be before I could get their swing. 
Shortly, I knew that the boat was "down by the head," and that the 



The Start From Black River. 21 

seat was too low — it had been built for fishing, not for traveling, 
for two or three, rather than for one person. I didn't worry, for 
I had to go to Cape Vincent where another cousin, Leon Peo would 
fix my boat for me. 

I rowed down the river, and the Bay opened out before — a 
great wide bay, it looked, with reed grown marsh, and gravel and 
sand shores and beyond the lake itself — Lake Ontario. I could see 
myself then on the border of fairylands of content. What could be 
better than tliis venture along the shores of my dreams, for I had 
hoped for years that I might some day go on the Great Lakes, and 
see them as I was seeing Lake Ontario, from a little rowboat which 
I could drag upon the beach if the wind was too strong. 

I had not pulled two miles before I met the wind — and was 
glad of it! The wind came out of the west, an afternoon wind, 
which increased steadily as I went down the Bay, and which kicked 
up waves that made my little boat buck and jump, and kept me hug- 
ging close to the shore where there was a kind of lee, and after a 
while the wind was so strong that I found it difficult to make much 
headway against it. Then I ducked into shore, in a little bay, ate 
a bit of lunch, and rested up — for when one is not used to rowing, 
he soon feels the pull against even a moderate headwind. 

I wanted to get to Cape Vincent in time for the motor boat 
races two days later, and the Cape was some thirty miles distant. 
I therefore had to hurry, when it would have been better to take 
my time. I pushed on down the wind to Bull Rock Point, and 
essayed to get around the point in the wind. The waves were break- 
ing heavily — as it looked to me — and one wave after another came 
hissing along the sides of my boat, splashing over. When a wave 
broke over the bow of the boat and wet me from head to foot, I 
retreated to a little cove, and in the dusk, put up my folding cot on 
the beach, drew down my blanket, and spread out the waterproofed 
muslin. 

I was tired and sleepy, and with the crash of waves in my ears, 
I fell asleep. Of course, I did not sleep many hours. No one 
sleeps from dark to dawn. I stirred about 10.30 o'clock, and found 



22 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

the wind was laid, and that the wash of the waves had become faint 
and small. I jumped up, broke camp, shoved my skiff out into the 
water, and by the light of the moon resumed my journey which the 
wind had interrupted. 

Nothing- gives me the same taste of adventure as does the night, 
and, those few hours that I rowed that night are among the most 
vivid memories in weeks along the north shore. The waves rocked 
me along the shore sounded the menace of the breakers, and ahead 
of me were unknown beaches of whose landings I knew nothing. 
I rounded Bull Rock Point, passed the dark gloom of Pillar Point, 
and landed at last down in the entrance to Chaumont Bay, where 
there were no swishing waves pounding along the shore. There I 
put up my cot again, and went to sleep. 

I had made a good start, on my trip, and If there was any feeling 
of disappointment, it was because it was not "wilderness," for where 
I put up my cot was within 150 yards of a farm house, and even by 
moonlight, the shores and fields beyond the shores could not be 
called "wild" in appearance. That first night I was haunted by a 
suspicion that I should not find much wilderness on Lake Ontario, 
and that made me question the trip, but when I looked out across 
the waters and saw the waves heaving darkly, there could be no 
mistaking their untamed freedom. Whatever the land might have 
to offer, at least the lake was as it always had been. Moreover, if 
I could go along the North Shore of Lake Erie, I should no doubt 
find there woods after my own desires. 



CHAPTER II. 
Canadian Customs. 

ALWAYS, the first night out on a trip is crucial; always the 
first day brings out one's undiscovered misfits and mistakes. 
I had been indoors practically for a year, and now that 
I was on the water, with the sun of the day and the 
wind of the night sweeping down upon me — oh, but the 
burn was hot ! My face turned the color of cherries — red cherries. 
Had I been wise, I should have accustomed m.y face to the wind and 
sun for an hour or two a day for weeks outdoors before I started on 
the trip. 

I did not have much opportunity to enjoy my sufferings for I had 
a long row that second day, and starting before my breakfast appetite 
had come, I left Chaumont Bay along the shore at dawn, and when my 
appetite came, at about 8 o'clock, I went ashore and cooked a good 
breakfast. I've found that it is sometimes better to have breakfast 
after hitting the day's journey than before starting. The resting to 
get breakfast was a joy, and when I had washed out the soup pail and 
the frying pan, I was ready for a long pull — and I was surprised how 
soon my long day came to an end. 

I had about twenty-five miles to row that day and had expected 
it to take until night to make it, but I rounded the light into St. 
Lawrence River soon after noon. I ate a lunch, shaved and loitered 
an hour or two on the river bank, and then came down to the dock 
about 2 o'clock — Peo's dock, where I was to visit cousins. 

Leon Peo has a launch and yacht factory, boat livery and minnow 
tank where most of the sport fishing on the Upper St. Lawrence 
River begins and terminates. Some twelve or fifteen river guides are 
always there, and these guides are the aristocrats of fishing, I think, 
for they get $8 a day for their guiding, and they have skiffs that 
startle the folks who knew the St. Lawrence River of old. Time was 

23 



24 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Canadian Customs, 25 

when the St. Lawrence skiff was a famous little row boat, fit to take 
a prize as a safe, speedy little pleasure craft. Now they have 25-horse 
power engines in their little skiffs, and they go to the fishing grounds 
at the rate of twenty miles or more an hour. 

It didn't seem right to me, making race courses of the routes to 
the fishing grounds, but the argument was put up that if the fishermen 
saw a squall coming, the skiff going twenty miles' an hour could beat 
the squall to shelter, and besides, with the fast skiffs the fishermen 
could go further and fish longer — hours longer than in the old days 
when navigation was with oars or sails, or both. At least the sports 
who come a-fishing are more than satisfied with the motor boats, and 
they're the ones who pay the bills. 

The tendency of the day is to make the man who rows a boat by 
strength of his own arm feel as though he was of another age. 
Companies that used to build hundreds of rowboats now build nothing 
but motor boats of all sizes. 

From the number of motor boats I saw on the St. Lawrence 
River, the ferries, guides, boats, camp boats, store delivery boats, 
excursion boats, errand boats — all kinds of boats — it was clear that 
the march of progress has assailed the out-door man along the water 
front. Now and then some trapper tells of building a gasoline boat, 
and no doubt the water sets of the near future, except on waters 
which cannot be navigated, will be made from motor boats. 

With a motor boat making six or seven miles an hour a man can 
easily cover forty miles a day, while twenty is a good day's travel in 
a row boat. The result is that in country where the trapping is along 
open shores a large part of the season, the motor boat will come into 
play, just as surely as the motor boat is driving in all the rowboat and 
handboat market fishermen. Even in Canada, where trapping no more 
than begins when the freeze-in comes, the transportation of supplies 
through the lakes and up rivers is being done in large measure by 
gasoline boats. 

My good friend, John B. Burnham, formerly chief game protector 
of New York, and now president of the American Game Protective 
and Propagation Association, told me two or three years ago about 



26 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Canadian Customs. 27 

going moose hunting in Canada. There were ten canoes in the party, 
and one canoe had a little removable gasoline engine on it. The engine 
was about a horse power, I think, and that little engine towed the ten 
canoes, saved all the paddling and made as good time. 

The motor boat races that I saw at Alexandria Bay were a new 
experience to me. There were several hundred motor boats there 
carrying passengers and the shores were lined with spectators. Many 
of the boats were little cruisers and some were large yachts, but most 
of them were little o::en boats for running around and fishing or visit- 
ing. Leon's boat was a little cruiser, staunch, and would make about 
nine miles an hour. He has a faster boat but preferred, in that mob, 
a safe boat to a prettier one. 

The racers were odd-looking creations, mere thin shells full of 
engines that roared and thumped and pounded and drove around the 
course like scared cats. 

It was curious to see the craft climbing over the waves with all 
but a foot or two of their sterns out of the water — and I enjoyed the 
ride down the river and home again in the stout little cruising launch. 
I saw a fool launch take a place just ahead of a 200-foot freighter 
that was going faster, and saw another fool launch circle around the 
first, and then there was a collision, and the launches all but sank 
under the bows of the freighter. Why do men show off at the risk of 
their lives — if their lives are not worthless? 

On August 7, Wednesday, I was ready to cross the American line 
into Canada. It was a fair day with a little wind. My cousin took 
the line and towed me across the St. Lawrence to the head of Carleton 
Island, where he cast off, waved his hand and flipped out of sight at 
the rate of fifteen miles an hour or so — and I was on my way into 
the "wilds." 

As I leaned to the oars, heading toward the bay from which the 
old canal leads across Wolf Island, I was a little perturbed, for Canada 
is a foreign land, with customs officials, and with laws and ideas new 
to me. It was delightful rowing and the heaving of the little waves 
was exhilarating. 



28 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

So far as I was concerned it was exploration — a new world, but 
disappointingly tame and subdued. There were acres of marsh, how- 
ever, and along the edge of the water I could see little hummocks on 
which muskrats sat to eat roots. The runways and swimways through 
the cat-tails and joint-grass were as open as good roads, though on a 
small scale and crooked as a rat could desire. There were rat houses, 
too, and in one place I could see where an otter was a visitor. No 
doubt mink were there, too; not a place where one would expect big 
game, but the edge of farm and pasture land. In those marshes, I 
learned later, there were plenty of trappers in season, and one who had 
a cabin on the Wolf Island canal caught a good year's wages there 
every winter and spring. 

The canal was growing up to weeds but there was a fair way 
through the weeds through which it was clear motor boats occasionally 
went, and I could row steadily, though my oars picked up weeds on 
both sides. Leon had raised the seat and shifted it and my boat was 
in good balance now, down by the stern and up by the head. A nice, 
comfortable rowing boat. 

As I was pulling along I heard a sudden shot ahead of me, and 
turning to look saw the smoke and a flock of black ducks coming 
toward me on the dart. This was before the duck season opened, and 
I knew somebody was hungry for roast duck. A little later I passed 
a few feathers on the water and a hole in the cat-tails, and I knew that 
whoever it was had departed in haste, not having seen me till after 
the shot was fired. A little later, at Marysville, on Wolf Island, I 
made some cautious remarks, and the way folks bristled up at the 
thought of some one shooting ducks out of season indicated divided 
public sentiment. 

Now, I had to go through the Canadian customs, and those in- 
tending to trip through Canada may well attend ! I landed at Marys- 
ville, and asked for the customs officer, and I found him in his house 
not far from the dock. The Canadian government has recently 
changed politically, and Mr. Fawcett was a newcomer on the job; but 
he knew his business. He said I should have to have a permit to take 
my boat into Canada and to cruise along the Canadian shores. I 



Canadian Customs. 29 

might have to make a deposit on it, but I'd better see the Kingston 
customs officer, as he did not have the cruising permit blanks. He 
looked my boat over and my outfit, and I went to Kingston to see 
the customs people there. 

They are kind at the Canadian customs office. They explained the 
requirements, and these were that I might not use my boat for profit, 
and that on my camp outfit I must deposit a bond to return the outfit 
to America. When they learned that my outfit was worth about $8, or 
less (folding cot, blanket, cooking utensils, etc.), they scorned the idea 
of a bond — too little to bother with. I might, at least, have had twenty 
dollars worth ! But I hadn't. 

They gave me a permit that was open till October 1, and I 
solemnly engaged not to violate the revenue or navigation laws of 
Canada and to return the permit when it should have expired. 

That was all there was to it. Then I went around to the game 
overseer to see about fishing. He was in a sporting goods store and 
he wanted me to pay a $5.00 license. That is, if I was to live on my 
own boat, live on imported supplies and not patronize the Canadian 
producer and merchant, I should pay $5.00, but when I explained that 
I didn't expect to camp out all the time, but would patronize folks who 
would take a transient boarder and that I would buy my camping-out 
supplies — grub — in Canada — or starve, he relented and let me have a 
$2.00 fishing license. I may add that I caught about forty cents worth 
of fish on the $2.00 license, but as I had $1.60 worth of fun, I broke 
even, the fishing tackle, a twenty-five cent line and a trolling spoon 
being extra. 

I would have been all ready now to start if it hadn't been for 
two things. First, when I left Cape Vincent, I forgot to bring my 
suit case and had to wait and have it sent in by express. Again I 
went through customs and the officer pawed down through the suit 
case and found nothing to increase Canada's revenues — just clothes 
and personal outfit. The other thing that held me up was weather! 
Oh, but weather looms large in skiff-boating on miles-wide waters! 
Wind and rain held me at Marysville nearly a week, and I was con- 



30 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

strained to get me a waterproof coat and to sit me down under shelter 
to wait till the clouds rolled by. 

I sat me down but was not idle. I asked questions about the 
lakes and the shores and sailors told me to watch out and to get a 
chart of the lake — and in all traveling, first of all, one should have 
maps — there are maps of most every place, and any map is better than 
no map at all. Already I had a map of the Bay of Quinte and of the 
east end of Lake Ontario. Now, I bought United States War De- 
partment charts of all the Great Lakes — of all the lakes, observe! 

I had had heaved into me a most astonishing and bewildering 
suggestion. A firm of publishers had asked me to write a book of 
adventure for them. I suggested that I would go up to Lake Ontario 
and while taking my vacation, make observations of what a boy would 
likely see. From them now came the suggestion that I not only see 
Lake Ontario, but also all the other Great Lakes as well, and so it 
was up to me. 

No more dilly-dallying, no more lolling at my ease while the 
waves whispered in my ears — no more regard for wet weather and 
tired shoulders! I'd got to the point where I must see all the Great 
Lakes, if possible, and see them right, not merely from the view-point 
of an idle pleasure seeker and summer rester, but from that of sailors, 
tourists, trappers, fishermen, hunters, 'long-shore folks and all. 
Naturally, when a man must, he must — but when I saw that this was 
August, and that I had thousands of miles to go, and hundreds of 
miles of lake shore to visit and view intimately, I caught my breath. 
Autumn is surely a wild time to cruise the Great Lakes in a rowboat ! 






^l^% 



SHORE" OF LAKE ONTARIO. 



CHAPTER III. 
In the Bay of Quinte. 

WHEN I found that my little pleasure jaunt was turned 
into a dash half way across the continent and back 
again, more or less, I felt like a friend of mine, and a 
little more. 

This friend had two dog pups, and the pups were 
rearing through all the shoes, stockings and other chawables on the 
farm. As he chased the pups out of the house with a stick of stove 
wood, my friend turned to remark : 

"You take a pup, and raise him right; then you've got something!" 

I'd undertaken a little hundred-mile rowboat trip, nourished it and 
treated it kindly — but, ho law, how it had grown ! 

"You'd better go to Lake Superior first," a sailor told me. "It's a 
good deal colder on Lake Superior than down this way." 

But I hated to go up there first rip, and the rowboat in the water 
and the Bay of Quinte calling. I thought I'd go up the Bay first, and I 
was thinking that if I could get a trip up the lakes on a freighter, I 
would see phases of the lake not seen by most tourists and lake 
travelers. At Kingston I tried to get up the lakes on a freighter, but 
there was no chance. So I went afloat from Wolf Island in my row- 
boat, pulled out past Garden Island and headed across to Penitentiary 
Point, where stands the famous Ontario prison, in which the desper- 
adoes of the province are confined. 

Out in mid-stream, for this was on the Upper St. Lawrence, the 
shores were far away, and the waves rocked with the swell from the 
lake. In a way it was nerve-trying, not a test of courage. A venture 
into unknown places does afflict the soul with doubts as well as with 
delights. I could not help wondering where night would overtake me, 
and the look of the land did not reassure me. It was too well culti- 
vated, too good farming land, once I was out of the city limits. The 

35 



36 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




In the Bay of Quinte. 37 

water was deep and pure, and beautifully transparent. There had 
been a fog all that morning, but at noon the fog thinned and by 1:30 
o'clock when I had pulled out, I had about seven hours of daylight in 
which to work my way. I did not know what distances I could make 
in a day, never having traveled in dead water with a skiff before, and I 
knew that this kind of going would be a good deal different from 
floating down a river. I knew that always the weather on the wide 
water would be a very large factor. 

I struck the North Shore at the Penitentiary and with a southwest 
breeze coming, pulled along in the waves from point to point, across 
the mouths of bays. 

I rowed steadily, driven along by the need of making time, and late 
in the afternoon I saw away out in the middle of the North Channel a 
little group of islands, which my chart said were the "Three Brothers 
Islands," on one of which was a lighthouse. Not knowing the light- 
house conditions, I expected to camp on one of the islands, as it was 
coming night. 

I pulled from the North Shore across to the first island, and found 
it a tiny rift of gravel, and then worked on a few rods to the second 
island, on which loomed the lighthouse. I had no more than reached 
the foot of the island when a voice hailed me: 

"Caught any fish?" 

On a rock point stood a stout little man, who had seen me trolling, 
and now he was there to greet me and bid me welcome. If the shores 
seemed to me to be crowded with farms and people, here on the three 
islands was no crowd — just one man who had to keep the light burning 
at night for the safety of the ships. From Collins Bay to Amherst 
Islands, some five or six miles, he had no neighbor, and he was as much 
alone for days at a stretch as the trapper in the wilderness depths— so 
he welcomed a visitor, and when I went ashore I could not camp out, 
but must sleep in the lighthouse. 

Apparently the transition from town to the wilds was to be made 
stage by stage, and it was just as well. Often too abrupt a change in 
one's mode of life is hard on the spirits. I got out some of the things 
I had brought to eat, and he brought out some of his supplies^ and we 

3 



38 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




THREE BROTHERS ISLANDS LIGHT. 



In the Bay of Quinte. 39 

talked late that night. An old man, more than eighty years of age, he 
found caring for the light a welcome task; in his day he had been a 
fisherman, catching 1,800 trout at one haul, worth then a quarter each, 
and now worth more than a dollar — but they catch no such hauls these 
days. His wife, and her mother before her, used to knit a pound of 
linen gillnet thread a day — but it is cheaper to buy the net now — twenty 
rods of net, thirteen feet deep, with from three to four-inch mesh 
weighed a pound. All the old lightkeepers' daughters were net knitters, 
too, and they received a dollar a pound for the knitting. 

What he told me showed that I was not so much rowing along the 
border land of a rich farm land as on the outskirts of the vast outdoors 
of the lake. I had but to look through the gaps in the islands to see 
the blue line of the horizon, and more and more, from that night, I 
came to understand that at the beach it all depends in which direction 
one looks whether he is in the great outdoors, or in the little outdoors 
of fences and farms. 

However, up the North Channel from Three Brothers Islands, I 
entered the Bay of Quinte, a Z-shaped channel inland which extends a 
hundred miles to Trenton and the Murray Canal — an excellent row- 
boat cruise, if one does not mind the proximity of valuable farms, the 
presence of other cruising folks, the passing by of countless gasoline 
launches, the cheapest of which makes the rowboat man question his 
own sport, and occasional summer resorts aflame with flags and up-to- 
the-minute "outing suits." 

I rowed up the Bay more and more, feeling as if it was a matter 
of duty. A man would be lucky if he saw a gray squirrel or helldiver 
up that bay, and I was not very lucky — I longed for the wild Canada 
that I had read about, and wished for sight of moose and caribou, 
sound of the howl of the wolf and the untamed wilderness. I began 
to fear that perhaps there were no such places along the Great Lakes, 
and that it was only too civilized. 

I camped out a la mode — I went up to the farm houses and bought 
milk — and if they wouldn't take pay, as sometimes happened, I would 
give some black bass which T had caught as I rowed along. There 
were plenty of bass — more than I could eat. There were so many of 



40 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Tn the Bay of Quinte. 41 

them that they seriously retarded my progress, for when one seized the 
spoon, I had to stop and haul it in, and yet I wanted to get my $2.00 
worth of fun and fish, I threw back many a fine black bass, and some 
ran up to more than two pounds in weight. Just for bass fishing, the 
lower Bay of Quinte was as good as I could wish for, and I wished I 
could stay in one place a week, as I would have done had not my route 
been extended so many hundreds of miles. 

Here, too, I learned something about the wind. Notably, I met 
the "prevailing wind," and that wind came down the Bay of Quinte, 
up which I was rowing. Nothing quite so tries love of rowing as 
having a. steady breeze always resisting every stroke of the oars, and 
waves always throwing themselves against the bow of the boat. Be- 
ginning with a gentle little zephyr, these winds grew and grew, till at 
last they drove me ashore. I would put up my cot, roll up on it in the 
blanket and go to sleep, and toward night, as the wind fell, go rowing 
on again. I learned not to dilly-dally along when the wind died down, 
and I welcomed the out-jutting point which gave me shelter under the 
lee. I learned to start on with the streaks of dawn, and sometimes I 
pulled after dark. 

More and more the good sense of the sailors who advised that I 
make haste to Lake Superior was impressed upon me, and when at 
last I came into the wide water at the head of the Bay of Quinte, after 
nearly a hundred miles of rowing (four days, plus), I was ready to 
make haste, having all I wanted of Lake Ontario waters, good as was 
the bass fishing. 

At Trenton I shipped the boat and boarded the steamer to Toronto. 
Had I foreseen my future course, I should have shipped the boat direct 
to Fort William by steamer. The cost would have been much less 
than shipping to Toronto and then reshipping to Fort William, but I 
had in mind at this time taking little camping trips in my boat on each 
lake as I progressed, but at Toronto the flight of time forced my hand. 
I reshipped the boat and then chased it up the lake as best I could, with 
due regard to seeing all of the shores and boats that I could. 

It was a pleasant little packet boat trip from Trenton to Toronto, 
along the North Shore of Lake Ontario, stopping at sundry little cities, 



42 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

all of which were summer resorts with canoes the popular craft— 
beautifully painted canoes with paddles varnished and flashing in the 
sunshine. I would like to see some of those canoes after about three 
months' service in "real" canoe country. At best the Lake Ontario 
shore is gasoline boat shore. Harbors are often a long way apart, and 
one needs speed and size, just to be in the fashion. Along such shores 
values are distorted. There is no more eloquent a bit of scenery than 
at Picton Bay, where the rock cliffs rise high above the Bay of Quinte, 
and yet the boys will understand the class of people one usually meets 
on those waters when it is remarked that these people commonly say, 
with surprise : 

"You ought to have stopped to see the big clubhouse on Picton 
Bay !" 

The clubhouse seemed more important than the water, or the stone, 
or the woods, or even the fruit and farm.s. Nobody had to pay for the 
bluffs, but the clubhouse cost an awful pile of money, and when anyone 
"touring" the bay failed to look at the clubhouse, he had missed about 
the only thing worth looking at ! 

As I neared the upper end of the Bay of Quinte the character of 
the water underwent a subtle change. It was no longer the free and 
swinging water of the Great Lakes, but had the character of enclosed 
waters, around which are many towns. The water began to fill with 
minute particles, the stones were covered with slime and along the 
shores were mute evidence of decay and deadness. The contribution of 
streams and springs was not enough to keep the water moving, and the 
last thirty miles or so was unpleasant rowing, not that the water was 
dangerously unhealthy, but that it was foul to look at, after the bare 
purity of the stones and cands of Lake Ontario. 

A great lord hurt the feelings of Toronto mightily by saying that 
the hotels there are the worst in the world — his world. This may be 
so, but I think, perhaps, he should have said the hotels of Canada are 
the worst in the world and give less for the money. I went to one in 
Toronto which charged for two days when I got there one afternoon 
and left the following day ; I had been there parts of two days, 
perforce ! In passing, the only place I ever saw that charged for each 



In the Bay of Quinte. 



43 




44 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

cup of coffee served at a regular meal was on the Bay of Quinte. In 
few respects is Canada as cheap as the United States, when it comes to 
traveling, but in the matter of out-door life, if one is careful and 
strikes for the wilds, he will have no cause to complain, except that the 
hunting and fishing licenses and railroad and steamboat costs stir the 
emotions of an American. 

Once my rowboat and camping outfit was out of my hands I headed 
up the lakes, seeing what I could see. I crossed to Port Dalhousie on a 
sort of ferry and there, after two days' waiting, I managed to catch a 
freight captain who would take me up through the Welland Canal — 
one of the great man-made sights of the North country, and it is worth 
seeing. It is not entirely devoid of outdoor interest, for along its 
banks, which for miles rise above the level of the farm lands, the 
muskrats have often caused much trouble, boring through the dirt. I 
suppose that there are always plenty of rat trappers to take care of the 
rats, however, and that they must make quite a little money for the 
hours they spend along the Welland and its feeders. 

I had one novel experience on the Welland — a wind storm that 
made the trip unusually difficult for the ship. The other ships tied in, 
but it happened that two boats of the line were on the canal and the 
captains were bitter rivals, so the two boats raced in the gale up the 
canal, prodding each other along in spite of wind, thunder and rain. 
It was a curious race and the boat I was on was so eager that it 
rammed a bridge guard, ripped off piling and seemed about fit to sink 
itself — but it didn't. What accidents befell the other craft I do not 
know. At Port Colborne, with dollar a day hotels that charge $1.50 a 
day, I took the train for Buffalo, where I stopped over with an uncle a 
day or two, and then went up Lake Erie by passenger boat to Detroit. 
At Detroit I went up the Detroit River, across St. Claire Lake and up 
the river to Sarnia, Ont. These rivers and the little lake are famous 
in hunting annals, and from the looks of the grassy marshes, the St. 
Claire Flats must have a great harvest of muskrats, as well as of ducks. 
There is a Venice along the lower St. Claire River, on the American 
side — dozens of little hotels, boarding houses, cottages and cabins, 
where people pass the summer months. The young folks get out in- 



In the Bay of Quinte. 



45 




46 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

rowboats and launches to take the wash of the passing steamers — 
which is, I suppose, great sport. 

I was an interested spectator — hardly more up that stretch of 
waterway — till I saw my first flying machine in motion. That was 
something, as it flitted around the boat and over the water. At Sarnia, 
the foot of Lake Huron, I found another ■ of lake traveling. I 
shipped as deck hand on the barge Case> up Lake Huron, just 

where, the Captain didn't know, but amu. he islands after cedar 
railroad ties. I wanted to know about life on arge. 



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BLACK LINE WITH ARROW SHOWS TH 



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tOUTE TAKEN FROM BUFFALO TO DETROIT. 



M 



CHAPTER IV. 
Working My Way up Lake Huron. 

ANY times I had been captain of a rowboat, and once 1 
was sort of assistant captain on a Chesapeake Bay con- 
verted log canoe, but now I became deck-hand on a 
tow-barge. They routed me out of a damp bunk, but 
comfortable sleep at 3 o'clock a.m., and I had to cast off 
ropes big as my arms, and haul on greasy "sheets" to hoist smoke 
stained sails — and that hauling wore the hide off the palms of my 
hands and pulled my arms out of joint. But when the sails were 
spread to the flowing breeze, the captain motioned me to the wheel, 
and all hands went below, leaving me as steersman. It was right 
lucky there was a long line leading to a steam tow-barge ahead, for it 
took me some little time to learn which way to turn the wheel to 
throw the nose of the barge into the right trail — and after I learned, 
I almost went to sleep. 

So I made my way up Lake Huron, decking and wheeling on a 
tow-barge. And that first night, a squall came along, and took the 
jib out of the bolt ropes and tore up the mainsail, and jumped us 
up and down like so much floatsam on the wide, wide sea — the 
worst squall, they say, in years. By noon, the next day, we were 
drawing in to land, and after dinner, when I was again at the wheel, 
the boat ran into a bay along some wild, scarred wilderness lowland, 
and there anchor was cast, while the steam tow barge went on its 
way to other loading places, leaving us to wait the sweet pleasure 
of the tie superintendent. 

As this was Cockburne Island, and near the head of Lake Huron, 
I was some hundreds of miles nearer my destination on upper Lake 
Superior. I was satisfied to know so much about life on a tow-barge, 
and now I wanted to keep on up the Lakes. The barge might lie 
there in that little bay a week, or two weeks, or a rnonth, depend- 

51 



62 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Working My Way Up Lake Huron. 53 

ing on the sweet disposition of the tie superintendent, who seen^d 
not to know that tow-barge people are human, and must make many 
trips to earn money. Rather than wait on the tie superintendent, 1 
decided to walk across Cockburne Island to the town, and there go 
either across the North Channel, or else up to the Soo, according to 
how fortune favored me. 

There was lots of old canvas on the boat, now that the wind 
had ripped and torn the jib to ribbons; so when I announced to the 
captain my intention of going ashore — I had, in shipping, warned 
him I'd go up, but not go down with him — I took a piece of the 
old canvas about 30 inches long, and seven inches wide. I split this 
canvas in two, so it looked like a pair of trousers. Then I looped 
a piece of trot line around the belt end, and some more pieces of 
trot line around the leg ends. These trot line ends I lashed around 
my suitcase and rain coat, makirg a pack. Then I went over the 
side into the yawl boat, and the captain and able seaman set me ashore 
on a sand beach, whence had been taken many cedar ties for another 
barge, and where few ties remained. 

In my hip pocket was my compass, and in my coat pocket the 
Lake Huron chart, showing Cockburne Island. It was just afternoon 
when I landed, and the problem was to get to the town, twelve miles 
away, before night. 

There was supposed to be a road from somewhere thereabouts, 
leading across to the town, but no one knew where the road was. 
However, I could see two men up the beach a ways, and on pursuing 
these, I learned that the road was near where we had landed, and 
that by following it out, and keeping to the left, I would get to 
the town. 

Thus I entered the wilderness on an old road, and when I turned 
to the right at a road fork, the trail became a mere path through 
fire-weed and an old burn in a slash. However, when I consulted my 
compass and chart, I saw that I was headed in the right direction, 
and kept on. 

Before long, I was entirely on my own resources as a woodsman. 
The trail split and forked and faded steadily, and it was no more a 



54 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Working My Way Up Lake Huron. 55 

road than it was a railroad. I gave up trying to keep to the "'main 
road," and took to the compass course, following whatever led the 
right way, and thus I found myself taking to skid gutters, haul 
roads, and mere cross-overs which the loggers had made in going 
from one slash to another. The lint seeds from the fireweed blew 
in clouds before the wind and stuck in the sweat that gathered on 
my brow. 

Foxes, mink, partridges, deer, and, I think, caribou or moose 
are on that island, but there are trappers there, too. Partridges, 
there were in numbers, and rabbits — a sort of mild hunting country 
for the one who looks for no very great abundance of game, and 
yet with game enough for good sport. On the neighboring island of 
Grand Manitoulin there are moose, bear and deer, and I could im- 
agine no better cruising ground for a gasolene boat in the summer 
and early fall — could not imagine any better cruising grounds for 
my rowboat than through that place, but I had not yet seen the 
north shore of Lake Superior. 

I was considerably in doubt for nearly two hours, as I shoved 
as nearly due north as the lay of the land and the windings of the 
logging trails would permit. It was an utterly skinned section of 
wild land, even where the fires had not burned. Little gnarly trees, 
if any, heaps of brush, tangles of briers, with some patches of little 
evergreen trees, and soil so thin that often I was tramping on the 
rock in place — the land was just rolling enough and just brushy 
enough so that I could neither see from the hollows nor from the 
tops of the knolls. 

I had noticed a man track in the road when I started out, and 
as the road faded, I took to looking for this man track. The track 
was coming and I was going, but I. reasoned that the man must have 
come from somewhere. I feared, at first, that it might be the track 
of a timber looker or hunter, but in half an hour or so, I saw that 
it wasn't a hunter, because it didn't go into good game cover. The 
direction it went was all right by the compass, so even if it was a 
timber looker, it would get me nearer the town. I followed the 
track through brush and over rocks and to keep to it some places 



56 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

I had to watch the broken fireweed stalks, in others it was moss and 
Hchens scraped on rocks, and once I picked it up by a broken cedar 
branch; where the ground was swampy and wet, I could follow it 
by the holes in the mud, or slidings on the timber thrown down to 
fill up the waterholes. 

The footprints went out of sight in some dry brush, and as I 
circled along the edge of some hardwood timber of small size, I 
picked up a fresh wagon track, and the sloshings through mud holes 
were still muddy from the passing. Thereupon, I took to the wagon 
track, and before long I caught sight of what I thought was a group 
of tents, but which proved to be a washing on a line, and two little 
log cabins. 

There were a number of little children there, and the woman of 
the cabins, when I hailed, stepped forth and said that if I followed 
the back track of the wagon, I would get to town. 

That was easy. I turned back on the wagon track and away 1 
went, through the hardwood, for a mile or so, and then I came out 
into a new contract road, all heaped up and graded and ditched and 
the right of way cleared through the woods. Following this, I came 
to a well traveled road, and picking directions by the compass, I 
came to the top of a hill, over which the wagon had gone, and from 
this hilltop, I looked across Cockburne Island with interest. 

There were clearings with small buildings, well painted, in them, 
but it was a wooded island, and the woods had that ragged and 
messy look which culled and skinned timber always has. There 
were few evergreens in the timber, but the hardwood was in all 
directions, and having plunged through two hours of that kind of 
timber, with its briers and brush and clouds of fireweed lint, I had 
little desire to go on and explore the interior of the island. Still 
heading north by compass along the highway, I passed through a 
clearing or two and between long thickets of second growth, where 
partridges were plenty, and rabbit runways numerous. 

Once, as the road gave a turn off my course by compass, I 
stopped in at a house to inquire the way — I was on the right trail, 
I was told. I had no wish, in those wilds, to tramp miles out of 






.« • 



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'^w—:'^^m:._:i:i 



--%. 



Working My Way Up Lake Huron. 61 

my course. A little later I met a man of great size, nearly seven 
feet tall, if he stood erect, I should think. He had a most scrubby 
beard of gray and black, and altogether a huge look — but he petered 
out when he spoke to me. His voice was as thin as a cat's, and 
peaked and whining. First he begged to know who I was, and then 
what did I do? When I told him that I had jumped a job as deck 
hand, he exclaimed : 

"Don't you think you was foolish to leave a perfectly good job 
when you had it?" 

He tapered off into a request for "Jes' a little chewin' tobacco," 
which I didn't happen to use. 

As it was a direct road into Cockburne Island settlement, there 
was only one more little service to make of woodcraft. I saw a path 
cutting down into some woods, where the road made a sharp bend to 
the west. I reasoned that this was a short cut, and took a chance 
on it — and so I saved a few rods walk, and could pat myself on the 
back as an observer of trails. 

They call the Cockburne Island settlement after the island, and 
also Tolsmaville. It has a sidewalk, a boarding house — "No hotel," 
a resident said mournfully — stores, fish docks, a saw mill in course 
of erection, a postoffice that is open once in a while; in fact, it is 
a town. I tried twice to get into a store, and learned that the store 
wasn't opened only sometimes, and so the store lost a sale or two. 
About the most embarrassing thing I learned was that there were no 
ways of getting out of the town, except the highway back into the 
wilds, and a steamboat that would come along in a few days. 

It had been a hot, sweaty and difficult tramp across the island 
and the thing that I most wanted at Tolsmaville was a chance to 
bathe, for in all the category of aids to the out-door man, there is 
nothing that ranks higher as a recuperative and restorative and 
medicine than a good bath, and when I had had my bath and was 
in clean clothes, I was ready that night to go on again, if chance 
offered. 

It would be some time, several days, before the steamboat schedule 
would allow me to leave the island; if 1 couldn't go, well and good, 

4 



^2 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

but I would have myself to blame if there was a chance to shove on 
and I didn't know about it. There was a tug and a schooner down 
by the dock, and after supper I went down to look things over. I 
found that a steamer had been obliged to jettison part of its carga 
over near the Duck Islands, and that fishermen there had salvaged 
the nails and barbed wire and other things that had been thrown 
overboard. So far, the fishermen had done wisely — had their mo- 
tives been right. They failed, however, to notify the Government o£ 
their fishing up the cargo, and the cargo consisted of American goods. 
The American goods must pay customs duty on going into Canada, 
and forthwith, when the Government heard about the salvaged cargo, 
it went after it. It seized the goods, and also went after the salvagers. 
The result was painful to all hands. I don't know just what hap- 
pened, but in a way, that jettisoned cargo had an important bearing 
on my trip. 

The Government, for its own account, sold the seized goods, and 
an American company bid them in. Then came the schooner and 
tug which I saw at the dock to get that cargo. But not all the 
goods were at Tolsmaville, for about three 'tons were over at Thes- 
salon, on the wharf there. The captain of the tug, Edward Laway, 
was going after that three tons, at about 7 o'clock in the morning, 
and he would take me over, if I got aboard — and I sure did get 
aboard. 

It was a foggy morning, and Captain Laway headed across on a 
compass course, and out there in the gray mist, we steamed along 
with the ragged chart and the compass, which was floating on coal oil, 
because the alcohol had leaked out of it; after a while it came 
time for us to reach Thessalon, and this time passed, and some more 
time, and still no Thessalon. We stared into the gray mist, ahead 
and abreast, anxiously — the captain serenely confident. 



CHAPTER V. 
Perils of the Great Lakes. 

CAPTAIN LAWAY ran along with his tug with as much 
unconcern as I would have run along with my rowboat, 
but he kept his eyes open, studying the water and scan- 
ning the fog. Shortly he saw a shade, and the shade 
proved to be land. Then, looking at the water, exclaimed : 
"There's a backwash in those waves !" and soon there glistened 
dead ahead a low rock point. We skirted along that point and the 
captain dropped the lead overboard to find how deep the water was; 
then he worked out around the point, to the starboard, and then 
pushing into the fog, came into view of a building and a dock; there 
was the place he was looking for, having hit within twenty rods of 
it on Thessalon point. I reached Thessalon days ahead of time, and 
Captain Laway and I went up to the hotel and got dinner on the 
strength of it. 

Between the squall on the tow barge and the fog over the North 
Channel, shot through by the tug, I was awakening to the possibilities 
of lake seamanship. How those lake sailors scorn the salt water 
sailors ! The salt water sailor is a bumptious sort of a man, who 
thinks that because the Atlantic ocean would swallow up the Great 
Lakes and not get the salt out of one wave, fresh water sailors can't 
know very much. The salt water man comes up to the Great Lakes, 
afflicted with curiosity and self-confidence, and shortly he gets into 
trouble. It actually takes more skill to navigate through the shoals 
and along the winding and rocky shore of the Great Lakes than it 
does to cross the Atlantic ocean, but the salt water man refuses to 
believe that. 

Now there was a party of sports came up to the Great Lakes a 
year or so ago. They were in a yacht almost two hundred feet long, 
and the captain, who could work his yacht through the Narrows into 

63 



64 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

New York bay, allowed that he could navigate his yacht through the 
islands of the North Shore. He had charts and compass, lots of self- 
confidence and scorn. He didn't think it worth while loading up his 
beautiful yacht with a hard-fisted, blistered and whiskery lake fisher- 
man of a pilot; he thought he could go it alone, and the result was 
that he went it alone, kerslam, up on a rock that raised the bow of 
his beautiful yacht about fourteen feet out of the water — that on a 
perfectly calm day, with the sun shining, and the birds singing in the 
trees. He was making fourteen miles an hour, when he struck, they 
say, and they say he believes the chart had the rock located a quarter 
of a mile out of the way. When they pulled this boat off, it sank in 
200 feet of water. 

That illustrates the perils of fresh water navigation when one is 
afflicted with too much knowledge of things that aren't so. No one 
wants to go to navigating the Great Lakes if he isn't willing to learn 
everything all over again, and then some more, all different from his 
first lesson. I had a pretty good opinion of my ability to take care 
of myself when I started, but the first wave that came over the bow 
of my boat, off Bull Rock point, left my conceit as limp as a wet 
white collar. From that day I was a willing and an anxious learner. 

However, sight of that tug captain, whistling and with one hand 
on the wheel, jamming through the fog showed me a number of 
things and the little lesson of watching the backwash waves was a 
valuable acquisition for me. I could see that if a tug drawing five 
feet of water could plow along at the rate of seven or eight miles 
an hour in the fog, I in my little rowboat could navigate, too. 

I may as well anticipate the sequel to that tug trip. I came back 
down the North Channel a few weeks later, and at Tolsmaville, I 
recognized the Tug John Kane and ran to shake hands with Captain 
Laway again. He said he's had an awful slow trip this last time, for 
he was fourteen days coming across from Cheboygan, and not yet got 
to the Ducks with a load of coal due there for the winter. I asked 
how that happened. 

"Why, you see, the tug sank in twenty-five feet of water and 
that delayed me almost a week." 



Perils of the Great Lakes. 6£ 

Delayed almost a week ! Shucks ! I'd been alarmed when I took 
a gallon or two of water aboard my, little skiff and this doughty lake 
captain, skipper of a tug, was delayed "most a week" when his tug 
sank ! In just a moment, there was revealed to me whole vistas of 
resourcefulness and courage. Though his ship had been sunk, he was 
delayed only a week! Other men, overcome by such a catastrophe, 
would have sat down and wept, sent for the wrecker, and lost a fall's 
jobs; but not so this man. Disaster served merely to delay and ex- 
asperate him — and so with all the real men one meets, the strong 
and able men whom nothing daunts, and who make of trouble oppor- 
tunity to get further. 

Thessalon, a sawmill town, and one sawmill already sawed out 
and shut down, its fires drawn, had some Indians sauntering along the 
street. I looked at them with interest, for I had heard of Indians, and 
now I was looking at them. Some men are disposed to call them 
"remnants" of a race that is "gone" — but they are not that. I fancy 
that the Indians are going to do a good deal more for humanity, par- 
ticularly Canada, than appears on the surface and in the newspapers 
recording the violations of the Indian List laws. 

It seems clear to me that Indian blood has much to give humanity; 
the instincts of the Indian races were for generosity, eloquence, love 
of nature and endurance. The instincts still survive in the children of 
the Red Men. If the term half-breed has long been a term of oppro- 
brium, hundreds of halfbreeds are making it a term of respect and 
pride. They refuse to deny their Indian parent, any more than they 
would deny the proud white blood. 

The Canadian people need the Indian faculties and instincts in 
their effort to conquer that wide desert of stone and starved wilder- 
ness that lies along the North Shores of the Western Lakes. There 
is wealth in that wilderness, opportunity and hope — but the whites 
would usually cringe before it, were it not for the Indian blood; those 
of Indian instincts are rejoicing that in that great wilderness "civiliza- 
tion" cannot make wheat fields and town sites. Civilization will have 
to continue the dark forest cover there, will have to make fishponds 
of the lakes and fur farms of the timber brakes and venison pastures 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 



"■^y I 



J^-f 




Perils of the Great Lakes. 67 

of the mossy rock crevices and spruce knowls. In this work the Indian, 
longing for the solitude of the dark forest cover, will find its out- 
look and its place in the progress of humanity. 

With interest I looked at those lank men of the people that feel 
alien in the land of their fathers. If they sometimes seemed to be 
slinking along, with their eyes upturned like a trapped fox's or like a 
skulking coyote — no matter ! Nothing could be prouder or more dis- 
tinctive than the bearing of those little children whose pale cheeks 
and straight black hair, whose alert dark eyes and supple figures 
whose full lips and graceful carriage, indicate a mental and physical 
inheritance of the good that is in two noble races of mankind. 

Anxious to get away from Thessalon, on my journey to Lake 
Sunerior, I nevertheless lost a precious day by waiting for the steamer, 
a little way-station packet, which failed to come because of fog. I 
had to go on the day after, taking the train. They have in Canada 
the custom of having several "classes" segregated on the trains. The 
"first-class" car, which is a car almost as good as old-fashioned Ameri- 
can smoking cars, is the car of high-toned folks, and I understand 
that very ordinary folks cannot buy second-class tickets. The second- 
class is the car of the "home-maker", and one sits on leather instead 
of dirty plush and pays a smaller fare and gets there just as quick. 
All over Eastern Canada when I was there, the railroads were ad- 
vertising trips to Winnipeg for $10. The ordinary fare is so high that 
people can't pay it, so they said $10, to get men to do the harvest work 
on the wheatfields. But to get back, the railroads charged $18, and 
thus sought to get a rake-off on the money the harvesters earned. Ore 
must pay anywhere from two to five cents a mile on Canadian rail- 
roads, with a rate of near four cents as a rule. While the cry is for 
"more settlers" the vicious obstacle of high rates on passengers and 
freight are kept up in all directions. 

The train from Thessalon ran through a land of stone mounds, 
old lake bottoms and burnings — a land for pioneers and "early settlers." 
Always along the railroads I saw the old burnings — terrible evidence 
of the carelessness and idiotic short-sightedness of the railroads which 
destroyed their own hope of timber freight by the simple expedient 



68 



A Trip ox the Great Lakes. 




Perils of the Great Lakes. 69 

of burning it all up with sparks from locomotives: They say along 
the railroad that every division of the roads through that v^ilderness 
of burned stone is paying its own expenses, and that the railroad in 
pleading poverty deliberately denies its own prosperity in order to 
keep rates up — mines and back-country timber, not yet burned up, fish, 
the plentiful pickings of berries by Indians, fur shipments, passenger 
traffic, yield profits on even the most barren miles of the railroads. 
How easy it would be, then, to cut rates and so increase general 
prosperity — increase the railroads' prosperity ! 

One needs a little Indian blood, or at least some of the instincts 
of an Indian to enjoy the Canadian wilderness, which is called the 
Canadian Desert, extending about 900 miles along the Canadian Pacific 
railroads. From the viewpoint of agriculture, lawn-makers, home- 
makers, peaceable men of the hoe, there is scant inducements to press 
into that wild land — but every mile back is a mile of joy and ex- 
huberance to those who like the untamed and th'e untamable. Even 
the railroads are like wild beasts in their ravening, while the wolves 
and weasels are satisfied with things to devour — rabbits and moose 
and deer and such like. 

The "Soo" is on the border of a great game and fur land, and 
the shores of Lake Superior contain many a fur pocket — places where 
trappers are few and game plenty. The North Shore is especially a 
place of "fur pockets," and Mr. Kreps in what he has told of that 
region has far understated its advantages — and its disadvantages are 
appalling to any but the hardened and courageous and enduring out- 
door man. 

At the "Soo," itself, one is not conscious of the game land so 
near at hand. The vast locks there, through which drives the grain 
and ore and package carrying fleets of the lake, and the building of 
huge industry, and the fuss and fuming of building and expanding, 
give scant impression of near-by wilds. Yet last summer a moose 
crossed the river and paraded in fear and agitation around the streets 
of the American "Soo," visible evidence of one of the great and 
wonderful game migrations of the American Continent, now in pro- 
gress, and sure indication of the bleak North Shore which has been 



70 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

famous in the history of American Furs from the days of the first 
Couriers of the Woods. 

Extending north from the "Soo" is a strip of farm land which 
is fertile and where the farmers are said to be prosperous and crops 
thriving, but this strip soon peters out on the edge of a terrible wild — 
a land where only supreme woodcraft enables one to pass through 
or to survive — and of this wilderness along its lake edge, I have 
some things to tell, for I coasted along it and was witness of some of 
its vicious aspects, as of its splendid and attractive features. 

At the "Soo," which is a handy place to get one's mail, and to 
bid farewell for awhile to the Stars and Stripes, I remained only a 
day or two. In that day a little closer inspection of the towns (Ameri- 
can and Canadian Sault Ste. Marie) revealed sure sign of nearby 
game lands. There were numerous places where guns, rifles and 
other firearms were sold, plenty of ammunition and fishing tackle in 
sight, men of familiar swing and gait — woodsmen — and a certain out- 
door complexion on most of the population — signs that this was an 
outdoor town. 

Time was when the "Soo" was the great fur trading station of 
the Upper Lakes, to which came the fur buyers and the trappers of 
tens of thousands of square miles of wilderness, and down to 1840 
there was no place in the country surer of its spring migration of 
picturesque and profit bringing men of the wigwam and log camp, 
hunting trail and trap line; but the steamboats, the receding frontiers, 
the railroads, have pressed the "Soo" into a minor place in the fur 
trade, and yet the "Soo" is at the gateway to a great fur country 
where it may be questioned whether civilization will ever establish 
permanent headquarters and reduce a beautiful wilderness to a homely 
and unhappy summer resort. 

I tripped up Lake Superior to Fort William on the steamer Al- 
berta, going by steerage, and so rounding out my lake voyaging ex- 
periences. In the steerage one pays $5.00 fare, and hires a mattress 
of the baggageman for what he can persuade you to give, else sleep 
on slats. You are wise if you bring enough for several meals to eat, 
for otherwise one must pay fifty cents a meal — and not very good meals 



Perils of the Great Lakes. 71 

at that — or sneak up to the pantry and bribe the cooks to give over 
sandwiches. 

The steerage of the Canadian steamers is interesting, chiefly be- 
cause of the contrast with the reports that make believe the Canadian 
railroads are so very generous with the people who want to settle in 
Canada, most of whom go as cheaply as possible, and therefore com- 
monly patronize the steerage and the second-class accommodations of 
these railroads-owned transportation companies. There seems to be 
no competition, except in seeing which can charge the most for giving 
the least. One would suppose that special effort would be made to 
make the lower class accommodations of pleasant memory to the people 
going forth to establish new homes in a country "served" by the 
transportation company, so that the company would have friends in 
that new country. But such is not the way of the lake passenger boats, 
which leave their steerage passengers to the petty grafters of the 
steward service. 

I was right glad when I reached Port Arthur and Fort William. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Canada's Fish License. 

PORT ARTHUR and Fort William are on the north side of 
Thunder Bay, and are about two miles apart, postoffice to 
postoffice. In fact, there is only a narrow strip of swamp 
between them, and this swamp is being extensively advertised 
and boomed into town lots. Some few buildings are already 
in the swamp, and the number is increasing as we are told, "apace." 
It's a boom settlement, with plenty of enthusiasm and vast hopes; 
prices of real estate are away up in the air, and judging from them, 
every land-holder must be rich in these towns. 

I had little time in which to see the towns, however. I wanted 
most to get clear of towns and entangling civilization, and look at 
the wilderness, which I had been approaching. I had had a glimpse 
of it as we came past Thunder Cape, at the entrance to the great 
bay, and the glimpse was reassuring as to the wilds, but a bit 
startling in its stony heights and scant timber growth. I wondered 
if I could always find a landing along the foot of such tremendous 
heaps of stone as that vast Thunder Cape ridge — a wondering that 
was not to leave me for some miles and days to come. 

Finding a place for the night, I sought the freight house and 
found my boat intact — but I was obliged to travel about two miles 
to get a release of the boat in the freight office. Then I bought 
some provisions — bread, flour, baking powder, potatoes, cheese, butter, 
canned soups, canned baked beans (for cold lunches), chocolate, etc. 
I patronized the Hudson Bay Company, which had a several-story 
building, which looked just like any other brick store in an ordinary 
town, and wasn't even surrounded by a log pallisade to keep out the 
Indians or ward off attacks of wicked independent fur buyers. In 
fact, the two towns seemed real civilized and peart, even if a little 
raw and boastful in advertising material. 

72 



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THE LAKE SUPl 










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OR ROUTE. 



Canada's Fish License. 77 

rhey have a delivery service for the Hudson Bay store, but the 
service was tired and crowded that Saturday night, and the company 
furnished me with a coffee sack to carry my purchases to the freight 
house where was my boat, and then, at dusk, I was fore and fit, and 
knew that in the morning I could start for the row boat trip along 
the lake shore. 

I sauntered around town and then I moved on to my bed where 
I slept well enough. In the morning I moved down to the dock with 
my suit case and other duffle, put them into the boat, and with the 
help of the dock watchman and a stevedore or two, slid the boat 
over the edge into the water and took my place at the oars. 

Away I rowed through the yellow water, stirred up by the 
dredges that are trying to make a steam boat channel in a little creek. 
I rowed down past huge wharf buildings, past a steamboat or two, 
and was struck with surprise when I saw a bear climbing up on the 
rail of one of those steamers — so! If bears were wandering around 
Fort William on a peaceable Sunday morning, smelling the decks of 
steamboats in that way, what must they be out in the real wilds? 
A look around showed that these towns were, in fact, settled in the 
wilderness, and not in the borderland of a great settled country. It 
is not far from Main Street to the Big Woods in that region. 

I waved my hand at the bear, rounded out into the bay, and 
started along the shore, with the idea of cutting out to Mouton Island 
and perhaps across to Welcome Islands, but I had gone only a short 
distance when a black cloud out of the west brought both rain and 
wind. I was driven to the shore, where I found shelter in a little 
frame building beside a railroad track. The wind kicked up waves 
and white caps — but in an hour it went on past, and I pulled out 
again, this time getting under the lee of Mouton Island, when a 
storm came along. From there I slipped across to Welcome Islands, 
and faced the dubious seven-mile crossing to Hare Island, which I 
could not see, it was so far away under the huge Thunder Cape. 
However, an old, old Welcome Island fisherman said there would 
be no more wind for several hours, and I risked the crossing, and in 
due course arrived at Hare Island, just as the breeze started up again. 



78 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

I landed, went to the fisherman's cabin on this island, and the dogs 
missed me till I was right along side; then they did make a noise. 
They were Emil Young's sledge dogs and the first of the kind I had 
seen to know their purpose. 

Young is a fisherman and he lives on Hare Island all summer, 
making money fishing. In winter he lives on Welcome Islands and 
visits often in the two towns. In his little cabin I became a little 
acquainted with the fishing phase of Lake Superior life — and a very 
lonely and isolated life, it seemed to me, though the black smoke of 
Port Arthur was plain on the far side of the bay. The smoke was 
further by far than the rocks of the Cape; two miles away, on the 
point of the Cape was the lighthouse, and this was Emil Young's 
nearest neighbor; the other was the Welcome Island light keeper 
and the old fisherman, who had read the weather for me. 

We pulled my rowboat two rods up the bank, as he said the 
wind might blow — and hardly was the boat up than it did blow, 
blew white and black all the rest of the night, and was a little gale in 
the morning, so I could not go on, but must wait for the storm to 
go by. I was not sorry, for suddenly Lake Superior looked huge and 
ugly, and I wanted to see the fresh water sea in better temper than it 
was all that day, as it beat and gnashed with pounding waves on the 
point, and sent swells along the flanks of Hare Island. Blue and 
distant I could see Isle Royal, and the chart showed that there was 
no mistake about it ; this was the country I had come to see. 

"The doggone wind is crazy these two weeks !" Young cried. 
"East ! East ! East ! Can tell nothing about it — from all directions, 
but East, East, East!" 

I had come up to Superior partly because the winds up Lake 
Ontario were west winds and head winds ; now the winds were east 
and that was head wind for me on my eastward trip along the lake — 
such is the perversity of the weather. There on the little island, in 
the welter of the waves, the significance of the wind became very 
large in my mind, and from that day onward always I kept my eye 
on the sky: for of all things a man in a little rowboat must look out 



Canada's Fish License. 



79 




80 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

for on wide water the wind is the great menace. Nothing else is 
anywhere near as important. 

"It doesn't take any time to get up a sea here," the fisherman said. 

How near the wilderness comes to the towns along that North 
Shore now became apparent from what the fisherman said. Wild life 
comes into the streets of the towns; rabbits are so plenty that around 
the lighthouses and cabin homes no one bothers much to hunt them. 
Grouse — partridges — are "everywhere." In the woods and recesses of 
the stone mountains are moose, deer, caribou and bears. Wolves 
appear at intervals. In the isolated places fresh meat was venison — 
"caribou meat," and as often as not the people called moose meat 
"caribou," since they are not quite accustomed to the recent comers, 
moose. 

There has been a migration along the North Shore of moose and 
wolves. A few years ago, I was told, all along the shore moose were 
scarce, deer very plenty, caribou plenty and wolves scarce. Then the 
moose began to move eastward and they appeared more and more 
frequently along the North Shore. With the moose came wolves ; 
caribou began to grow less plentiful and deer were rapidly dispersed 
or killed by the wolf packs. It was as if the balance of Nature was 
swinging. 

The day I waited over on Hare Island was September 9, 1912. I 
knew that this was late in the year for a trip along the North Shore. 
All summer long it had been cold and windy, and the promise was of 
an early Fall, of bitter autumn gales — and yet the rowboat was better 
to travel in, perhaps, than another type of craft. I could haul the 
boat out on shore anywhere, but in a large boat I might be storm- 
bound, caught by a bad sea in an unsheltered place. If one contem- 
plates a journey on wide waters, this question of being able to haul 
up the beach is of great importance and should be well considered. A 
rowboat up the beach is much safer than a gasoline launch anchored 
off a windward shore when a gale is blowing. 

All along the North Shore the fishermen have no love for the 
fish laws that make them pay $50 for a pound net and $10 for a gill 
net license. In fact, the subject of game and fish preservation is one 



Canada's Fish License. 81 

hard to understand and reduce to the best terms in written law. 
One thing shows the Canadian laws in a sad and unbecoming light. 
One inevitable law of Nature has been wilfully disregarded all along 
the lakes, and the country and the fishermen are paying the penalty. 

More fish have been caught than have been growing up. The 
consequence is fishing isn't as good as it used to be. Instead of 
providing for more fish, the country has not done anything worth 
mentioning. The United States, thirty or so years ago, started in to 
replace the fish that were netted by planting fish fry and fingerlings 
of all the kinds desirable in the Great Lakes. Perhaps Canada 
thought that the efforts of the United States meant easy fish for the 
Canadians. As a matter of fact the fish planted by the Americans 
did increase the supply on the American side and staved off, if it 
didn't prevent entirely, the annihilation of the food fish supplies. The 
planting on the American side, however, did not save the fishing on 
the Canadian side — there the fishing has grown poorer and poorer all 
the time and market fishermen find themselves suffering from the 
scarcity. 

Canada tried to make amends by high net license — a stroke that 
hurt the incomes of the fishermen still more. Then it tried the ex- 
pedient of reserving the spawning beds of the fish — only to buck up 
against the everlasting howl of politicians anxious to placate the 
fishermen. It was even necessary to pass a law forbidding the 
fishermen dumping the fish refuse overboard in the lakes and harbors, 
although the fish refuse rotting in the water, polluted it and drove the 
remaining fish away. Now thousands of tons of fish refuse is dumped 
on the bank, there to become the breeding place of insects ; in a land 
where gardens are few and sterile, that refuse would double the crop 
of potatoes and other roots along hundreds of miles of shore, and yet 
it is all wasted, and worse than wasted, for the stench around the 
fish docks is unbearable and the houses nearby are simply alive with 
flies. On the screens of Young's cabin he killed quarts of flies by 
throwing boiling water on the black masses of flies. Young had no 
real garden for the refuse; the strange part of this waste of offal is 
that it is worth $30 a ton on farms down east at least; in that wild 

5 



82 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

and infertile land it is worth at least $50 a ton, as prices up that wa> 
go, but I saw none who use the fish offal so wastefully cast away. 

Even the spawn of the lake trout is thrown away by the ton, 
because the government permits fishing — perhaps because the fish com- 
panies are so powerful — during all the spawning season, none of the 
spawning beds being really efficiently protected, for the law against 
fishing nets across mouths of spawn bed streams is violated, and 
always will be violated as long as lake trout, black trout and other 
trout can be shipped during the spawning season. Stop the spawning 
season fishing and the lakes will again get their supply of lake trout 
and other trout; if the spawning season fishing is not stopped there 
will be no fishing left for anyone. 

There are other questions of this sort that are raised by the 
bountiful Nature that gave Canada uncounted lakes and streams of 
as pure water as there is anywhere in the world. There are countless 
lakes which could be developed into fish-raising aquariums, where 
tons upon tons of trout could be supplied to market, just as beef 
and mutton is supplied to market. Some of these lakes now have in 
them only a kind of little sucker that grows to a length of a few 
inches, and they are inaccessible to trout on account of impassible 
waterfalls along the streams. Other lakes, on streams that are not 
blocked, are alive with brook trout, which in some future day will 
make the Canadian Desert a great source of supply of trout and 
other good fish ; but the Canadians must wake up and tend to business 
— being very proud of business, apparently, although pseudo-business 
is often their chief concern now, and they don't know it. 

When, on the 10th, I pulled out from Hare Island and rounded 
Thunder Cape, I was wondering what strange country I would see. 
I had no idea what to look forward to — utterly no memory of thing 
read or heard of to help my imagination, except one fact that was 
stirring and hopeful in its suggestion. 

Along this North Shore, through these waters and along this 
very land, years ago, more than two hundred years before, the Indians 
had paddled their canoes and the fur-traders had paddled their 
canoes, laden with bales of skins on their way eastward toward the 



Canada's Fish License. 



83 




84 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

Soo and Montreal. I was in the wake of the great fur trade, and if 
they had gone in canoes, there was no reason why I should not go in 
a well built skiff; that much was reassuring. 

It did not dawn on me that the shore would be much the same 
now as it was then, that there would be only a few settlers along the 
shore, that the visible changes along most of the way would be only 
such as criminal carelessness with wilderness fires had made and an 
occasional cabin almost invisible among the trees and stones. I had 
expected a semi-wild country and had created a vision from ex- 
perience in the trailed and blazed Adirondacks, and in the mountains 
of the South, where the valleys are cleared and in farms and the 
mountain tops covered with skinned woods. 

A few minutes after rounding Thunder Cape the tremendous 
truth was revealed to my astonished and startled gaze. That vast 
face of tree-grown and frost-splintered rocks was the same, and in 
the same condition as when the first French Courier de Bois came 
that way with his new found duskv friends. 



CHAPTER VII. 
A Region of Big Game. 

ALONE between the wilderness and the sea — this was where 
I found myself on that bright morning off Thunder Cape's 
vast heap of jagged stone. There was really the home 
of the moose, the sauntering ground of the bear, but it 
was some time, and I made a good many miles before I 
fully sensed the wilderness quality of the shore. I had yet to under- 
stand that the people there were miles apart, that when I did see any 
one, he was likely to be the only man anywhere within miles — that 
the scattered habitations along the lake shore were all the habitations 
in that whole region, barring scattered settlements along the railroad, 
forty miles or so away, and that between that lake shore and the 
railroad hardly a trapper's cabin, hardly a trail, marked the presence 
of mankind in those tumbled stonelands. 

Sight of that shore startled me a good deal, for I had not antici- 
pated the character of the country. My memory of the Lake Erie 
shore had been of a long sand beach along which one could stroll for 
miles — but I had not thought so far as to consider a coast with per- 
pendicular rocks at the water edge — a shore that one could not follow, 
except in a boat. Suppose I should punch a hole in my boat? I had 
meant to get some tacks so that if I should break in the boat bottom 
I could cover the hole with waterproof muslin or rubber cloth. Now 
T recalled that well-meaning, and determined to stop at Silver Island 
and get the tacks. 

They spoke of Silver Island at Fort William as a "summer resort," 
and my prejudices had been instantly aroused. I had no wish to see a 
summer resort ; they are an abomination, summer resorts are. Now, 
I felt obliged to stop at Silver Island and buy some tacks. I did not 
know where it was, but skirting along the shore I ran in behind an 
island where a dock appeared on the mainland, and on the dock was a 

85 



86 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

wharf house, with sundry young men in sight, and a slender youth wHg 
looked exactly like a summer resort youth, to my prejudiced eyes. 
However, I landed in, after passing by, and found tacks there. 

If I had only known what I heard two hundred miles down the 
coast ! The kindly captain there was Cap'n Cross, and the stocky 
young man there was his son. They have, I was told, 300 mink in 
captivity in pens there at Silver Island, and refused $1,000 for one 
hundred of the mink, preferring to keep them for breeding. They 
have several silver foxes in captivity, and other foxes — and I came 
right past with never a word about that fur farm, the very thing I 
would most have enjoyed seeing and asking questions about. More- 
over, that young Cross was out one day last spring looking for a 
strayed cow, when he found a moose calf that a bear had killed. As 
he looked at the calf the cow-moose charged him, chased him and ran 
him to a bluf¥, so that he had the choice of jumping or fighting the cow. 

He jumped into a birch treetop and most broke his knee. The cow 
jumped after him and broke her ankle. Then the two raced for the 
town. The young man reached an abandoned ore reduction plant, and 
took refuge in the machinery, the moose rearing around, trying to tear 
him out, and succeeding in making the plank fly. The do:is of Silver 
Island heard the racket and came on the jump, and they managed to 
drive the cow moose to cover. 

Perhaps distance makes the stories larger, but at least, Silver Island 
was much more than a mere summer resort. I was there only ten 
minutes and drove on along the shore toward the east, for after my 
introduction to the wind, I knew that I must make haste while I could 
if I would get along. The North wind was strong, but it was an off- 
shore wind, and under the lee I did not feel it to amount to anything. 
The shore maintained its wildness with emphasis. A brushy woods 
and a rocky shore, and where I land.^d in for lunch in a little bay 1 
found what looked like cow tracks in the sand, and I knew they could 
not be cow tracks, but must be mocse or caribou. I could not help but 
gaze with awe at that land. 

I had no firearms of any kind with me, not even a revolver or 
pistol, and as I realized this I could not help but feel just a little 



A Region of Big Game. 87 

apprehension and doubt, wondering was it wisdom on the part of a 
traveler there to be unarmed? I don't think it was wise; having no 
hunting Hcense and desiring none, it would not have been worth while 
to have a rifle or shotgun, but at least a good, healthy revolver or 
automatic pistol would have made me feel more comfortable, especially 
as a few days later I heard wolf stories — not the old-time man-treeing 
kind, but thoroughly up-to-date wolf pack kinds. Of course, wolves 
seldom attack men, but in a wolf country one would better be ready 
for the unexpected and unlikely. 

Of course, if I stopped to think about the wolves and wild animals, 
it was not so much to worry about them as to gloat over the fact that I 
was there and that they were there, and that I had at last reached the 
real wilderness, home of moose and caribou and wolves. Away back 
in the great timber lands, in the wild fastnesses of the rocks and 
deserts, live those men who hear the wolves howl every night and who 
have only to step a few rods from camp to find the tracks of big game 
— I wonder do these people know the sensations of those who are 
strangers to their experiences and manner of lives, when these 
strangers enter the country of big game? Sorrlehow, a good deal that 
seemed like very important wild life in my previous experiences sud- 
denly revealed itself as almost make-believe in its simpleness and 
narrowness, its proximity to civilization and farmlands. 

At Black Bay I found a problem before me which was embarrass- 
ing. The North wind came down twenty or thirty miles of Black Bay, 
and where I was the waves were rolling up pretty high and breaking 
with a sharp rush that was disquieting. I did not know whether it 
would be safe to attempt to cross the bay or not — and I was there to do 
nothing foolhardy — to take no chance. I had much to learn about 
waves and tide water. I know now that those waves were not at all 
bad and that there was- no danger in them for me, but I ran along the 
shore up the bay a ways, and as I crossed one little bay I saw some- 
thing jump back from the bank. It looked much too large for a deer, 
and I surmised it might be a caribou, but do not know, for it was 
gone too quick to see clearly. 



88 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

A pound net on a point some distance above indicated fishermen, 
and as I went out to the pound, I ran into the waves, took them with- 
out difficulty or danger, and knew that I could get out to the islands in 
the bay, so I pulled out to them, not unconscious of the chance of the 
wind increasing a good deal. Under the lee of the islands I looked 
farther across to the east shore and tried to pick the opening through 
the islands there toward which I should head. The islands were so 
close together that I could not see the channels among them, nor the 
bays the map showed. However, I pulled that way and in something 
like an hour the channels and bays came into sight, but it was luck, 
mostly, that carried me into the right channel that led between Porphyry 
Point and Edward Island — just a little channel a few rods wide going 
into a deep wooded gap. 

I had little expectation of finding anyone in that maze of channels, 
but I knew that there was a fisherman on Magnet Island. As I pulled 
toward Magnet Island I spied a launch anchored ahead of me, and 
when I reached it found two men towing firewood logs. They were 
from the Porphyry lighthouse, and said that the fisherman was 
"straight ahead." I went on and soon seemed lost among little islands 
and large. I could see Magnet Island, a long and wooded island, plain 
enough and with the wind that was blowing, I hesitated to brave the 
waves — yet they were not bad. 

I saw, at last, two big wooden triangles on posts, and surmised 
that a steamboat channel was there. I rowed around to the outside of 
Magnet Island and found only a barren shore. I had hoped for a 
snug harbor with safe landing at a fisherman's cabin. Now, I gave 
up trying to find the fisherman I knew was somewhere within a few 
miles of the place, and pulled back to the wooden triangle and started 
down a narrow channel, looking for a place to camp in on some little 
island, I was no sooner in the narrows than I spied a pound net pile 
driver, and a moment later some little cabins. 

There was smoke from the cabin stacks and men under the trees. 
I ran in, having found the fishermen, and learned a lesson. They had 
told me the fishermen were on Magnet Island; but they were, in fact, 
on a little island near Magnet Island, off Magnet Point. Other fisher- 



A Region of Big Game. 



89 




90 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

men, said to be on other large islands, proved to be nearby on small, 
unnamed islands. Unless one has the habit of finding places meagerly 
described, both woods and lake directions are apt to prove insufficient, 
for v^hat is ample direction for one man is for another hardly under- 
standable, and frequently I've found myself able, by the best attention 
to understand what any fisherman would know without being told. 
Somehow I've always been able to blunder through somehow, but many 
times I've reached my destination just when I was about to give up or 
had given up. 

It was almost dark when I reached Magnet Point and rowed in to 
the camp there. They were glad to welcome a stranger who would 
vary the monotony of life there between the woods and the water. 
One man was Louis Gague; the other Edmond Geaudreau, both of 
Port Arthur, where they live winters. Mrs. Gague was with them. 

They confirmed the idea that this was real wilderness. From there 
to the railroad was no one, while the islands and the mainland, the 
point of which- was marked by the wooden diamond signs, were covered 
with woods alive with game — with moose, bears and furbearers. Once 
in a while a trapper comes to those lands to trap, but the fur is not 
all caught up by any means. 

Otter and beaver are plenty and protected by law for some years 
to come. The wisdom of the Canadian Fathers is nowhere illustrated 
quite so clearly as by the law protecting the otters. Otters devour tens 
of thousands of fish, which are growing scarcer all the while, and the 
government, in its mighty wisdom, protects them. Of course, otter 
couldn't be exterminated in those islands, but some sports, gifted with 
more sentiment than knowledge, wanted otters protected, thinking, 
perhaps, they were on the same grade with beavers. 

Now, I will bring in ahead of time a suggestion made to me by 
Game Overseer Nuttall, of Port Arthur, whom I met at Port Coldwell, 
some scores of miles beyond Point Magnet, but whose remarks apply 
to this matter of protected otter and beaver, as well as to other fur. 

Nuttall said that the way to protect beaver and other fur is to 
have a five years' close season, followed by a five years' open season. 
That would give fur a chance to get going again, and yet not let it 



A Region of Big Game. 



91 




92 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

become a nuisance the way otter and beaver, especially beaver, have 
become. The protection of beaver has caused them to spread all over 
the woods, and above Port Arthur there is a hundred thousand acres 
of pulp wood, worth more than all the beaver skins of Ontario, killed 
by the overflow of beaver dams. 

Here is something to think- about, this suggestion of Nuttall. Shut 
down the law on, say skunk, mink and muskrats for five years, where 
these animals are skinned out. Shut down only two years on muskrats, 
if that is enough, and then open two years ; the alternate open terms 
of years would result in ample fur and give the trappers better incomes 
than they can get anywhere now isn't this so? 

As night began to close down on us there at that little island camp 
a light suddenly gleamed and then shone far down the water in the 
eastward. It was miles away, five or six, and its sparkle there was 
particularly interesting and pleasing. It was a lighthouse, built there 
for the purpose of lighting the way of barges loaded with lake shore 
sand on their way to Port Arthur for use in buildings. Somehow, I 
do not remember having seen anything that seemed so lonesome as 
that light there on Great Shaganash Island. The place was so utterly 
away from everything, separated by islands and channels, and miles 
and woods from all but these fishermen on Magnet Island— the little 
island near Magnet— that it was almost depressing; and this feeling 
was often with me in the days to come, as I realized how far away 
these good people are from everything and every one, compelled to 
fight alone, almost, when it is standing together and using the combined 
strength and wisdom of all that makes mankind strong. 

My route in the morning, they told me at the Point Magnet camp, 
would be past the lighthouse and across Roche de Bout (boo) Bay, by 
way of Black Dock beyond. And in the morning calm, when I pulled 
out and headed away down the east, my sense of the wilderness and 
isolation had increased many fold, from listening to the remarks about 
moose and wolves and the farness of things from one another, bay 
from bay, island from island, man from man. 

I must not fail to stop in and see the Shaganash light-keeper, the 
fishermen said. One must be sociable in this region. His passing is an 



A Region of Big Game. 



93 







l««*l 


r 




4- 



94 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

event of interest and importance, especially if he goes in a rowboat, 
and is more or less unlike other passersby, as a stranger voyaging on 
an old fur trade route. 

Shortly after I started the wind started up in puffs and became 
fairly brisk. I had a pole on board and a rectangle of muslin tied to it 
in a leg of mutton triangle sail, and it carried me along about four miles 
an hour, or as fast as I could have rov^ed. When I came to the light- 
house I rowed in and landed, somewhat to the surprise of the keeper, 
William lies Fairall, who finds there a pleasant summer home and 
place to view the world with philo:ophic happiness in its natural aspects. 

It was quite the most natural place I had seen, with water and 
islands and wild mainlands, untempered by rude or commercial hands 
of mankind. He fixed a boom on my sail for me and after a little 
visit, I started on again, heading for an island ten miles away down 
the bay, past which I should go to get to Black Dock, the next inhabited 
place along the route that I was following. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
In the Fishermen's Camp. 

AS I sailed down Roche de Bout the wind increased slowly, 
but steadily, and the harder it blew the higher the waves 
became; the more the waves kicked up the more I sat up 
and looked around, for if there is any one thing that 
looks big, it is a wave coming up astern, with a little curl 
on the crest of it. I was far from land — several miles — and that 
fact was disquieting, in an increasing sea, and the way to get to land 
was run with the wind into the higher waves down the lee. 

By the time I was down near that miles-distant island, the waves 
were jumping, not so awful much, but enough and to spare. I saw 
that with my knowledge of sailing, I'd better trust mostly to my oars, 
and so I let fall my sail and mast, and took to the oars, with which I 
felt more at ease. 

Now, noon was gone by, and I was hungry, and I wanted some- 
thing to eat. I pulled down the flank of the island, a large, rocky 
ridge covered with wilderness, and there I landed in a little bay. On 
the beach of gravel I built a fire. I sliced up some steak amd put 
it in the frying pan and fried it. Then I cooked some potatoes and 
it wasn't very long before I had a first-class meal. 

I should say of this steak that it was the first of the kind 1 
had ever eaten. It was handed to me by a man who said it was 
good meat to eat, and that some time when I should get to cooking 
my own dinner, it would be dandy. And so I found it — moose. 

What was I doing with moose in September? I found that in 
that great unorganized territory the people are obliged to live on the 
game, if they would have fresh meat; they used common sense in 
the matter and wasted no wild meat, where meat is plenty. They 
would not tolerate, for a day, a game butcher or a mere sport, shoot- 
ing for fun, but they recognize the conditions as they are and the 

95 



96 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

law is used for the benefit of the people, and not for the benefit of 
the gangs that call themselves "sports" and kill without hunger and 
waste without sense. The stranger in that country is warned not to 
kill game, however. The people are as jealous of their game as 
farmers are of their cattle, and for the same reason. A lone traveler 
would be a butcher to kill a moose, but I do not imagine any great 
furore would be made by most game overseers or local protectors if 
a man was caught skinning a rabbit or potting a partridge when he 
had no other fresh meat to fall back on. Anyhow, I had no gun, 
and moose meat tasted as good as any meat I ever ate. 

I ate about two pounds, and then went afloat again. The wind 
was still blowing, but along the shore was a kind of a lee, and I 
got well down in the narrows where I swung out in the mid-channel 
and rode the waves to my own delight, feeling that they were not bad. 

It was sunny and clear and so wild that I could imagine nothing 
wilder, though perhaps I might find places farther from civilization. 
As I rowed along, I looked at woods and waters, at bends and islands, 
at low mountains and stony ridges, and evergreen timber and bushy 
point and top, where I could feel life was free and savage. I could 
almost see bears and other creatures. 

Suddenly out of the left corners of my eyes I caught a flash. It 
was just a disturbance of water a long way off; when I looked to 
see what it was — a flicker in a little bay behind a point of rock. There 
was a black something in the water, quite too far for me to see what 
it was, but I knew it was game, and I pulled my boat about, started 
up wind and pulled for a screen behind the point, under which I could 
row in nearer and get a closer view. 

All the joys of hunting were mine just then. I had my camera 
and as soon as I was out of sight I fixed the camera for a shot. Then 
I ran in to the point and crawled up on the shrubby bank to get a 
sight of the animal, bear or whatever it was. As I raised to observe 
the creature I saw a sleek, nubby back and shoulders. As I studied it 
a shudder ran through the back, the muscles drew and then up out of 
the water reared the tawny horns and gnarly, homely head of a bull 



In the Fishermen's Camp. 97 

I suppose a very large proportion of the readers are familiar 
with big game and have seen at least deer. I had seen hundreds 
of deer, and killed a few. I now looked for the first time upon a 
wild bull moose, from back to nose, and from prong to prong of his 
terrible horns. 

Ho, law, but he was a big brute! He chanked the weeds that 
he had rooted up out of the bay bottom, and the water ran down 
his palms and poured into the water in little water falls. His back 
was black, his horns yellow, his muzzle gray and his eyes the wickedest 
little glints of evil that I remember seeing outside of mink and white 
weasels. 

When he ducked his head for another mouthful I jumped for my 
camera, and crawfished over the point toward the bay. When I saw 
his back quiver and the muscles over his shoulders begin to hummock 
up, I stopped short and froze, and watched that stag rear up with 
flying water and blowing nostrils. 

An old buster of an ugly looking brute; my enthusiasm over a 
close inspection abated as I drew nearer and nearer to him with each 
submersion, and finally, when I was in the fringe of alders at the 
water's edge, I was close enough, though not so very close at that. 
I wished I hadn't tied the boat quite so tight on the other side, and I 
wondered if the brute would charge me, if he saw me, and I had 
lots of thoughts on stories of angry bull moose that I had read about. 

However, I adjusted my camera, and aimed it and focused it and 
when the animal's head was up and quiet I pressed the bulb — and had 
the sensation of my life. The sharp click of the camera was like a 
pistol shot, almost, there in the quiet, and Mr. Moose jerked his 
head around to look straight at me, and during that long inspection a 
blue-bottle fly strolled across the bridge of my nose and down one 
cheek and across my mustache, over my lower lip and around to my 
ear, and then the moose reached down into the water for another 
mouthful. Then I squared accounts with the blue-bottle fly. 

Again I tried to get a picture of the moose, and then I crawfished 
back across the point with one eye on the moose. Just as I reached 
the back of the ridge he lifted his head, scratched his ear with one 

6 



98 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

hind hoof, shook himself violently and walked ashoie on the far side. 
I thought he must be two stories high, for the length of time it took 
him to get out of the water up the bank, and the way he kept looming 
up and up — it was a beautiful view of a bull moose, and I could have 
had no better anywhere under any circumstances, I feel sure. I was 
quite close enough to him, too. But the photographs proved too small 
for reproduction. 

Then I went on down the bay toward the foot of the large, long 
island opposite. 

I could not help but notice the restless way in which my eyes 
sought traces of mankind. The little surveyor's triangles on points and 
islands seemed to fairly stick out of the landscape. The pound net 
pole washed upon the beach caught the eye a long way off. A gap 
in the woods would suggest ax-felled trees. A glint of white or 
peaked or angular shape would call for another look to see if it was 
cabin or flash of tent. How keen the eye becomes for some friendly 
mark I discovered near the foot of the island. 

As I rowed along, wondering where Black Dock was and what it 
looked like, I suddenly picked up a faint white line up the bay at the 
foot of the island, now behind me. It was a long way off, and tlie 
line was not clear white, yet I felt that it was some kind of a boat. 
I searched the bank, and the island hillside, but the eye instantly dis- 
carded the thought that there was a camp there; there was no trace 
of a camp, except that boat whose shape I could not make out. 

I supposed it might be some hunter, and it was none of my busi- 
ness if it was a hunter, so I pulled on. I rowed on into narrowing 
channels and after awhile I came into a flock of islands in which 1 
lost hope of finding Black Dock. Within five minutes I rounded a 
turn, entered a little channel, and there was a cabin on the open hill- 
side, fish net reels, a fish dock, and two men repairing an old boat. 
This was Black Dock. 

I needed no second look to know that those little children, romp- 
ing around, playing with a puppy and little play-boats in a tub of 
water, were part Indian — happy as children could be. This' was Dick's 
camp, and, of course, I could stay there, though the house was crowded 



In the Fishermen's Cj 



% 




100 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

and I should be obliged to sleep in the storehouse, which was no hard- 
ship. When I mentioned the boat up in the bay, they said it was berry 
pickers there. After awhile the berry pickers returned, an old Indian 
woman and an astonishing young woman, plainly a Scandinavian and 
pretty, with no trace of Indian in her face. She was the wife of one 
of the men, a half-breed employe of George Dick, the other man. 

When supper was ready I was taken up to eat, and after supper 
they wanted me to hear some music — a "talking" machine. The 
strange girl, of fair complexion and pretty figure, blue eyes and well- 
fitted dress, brought out record after record, and while the jig music 
filled the room two little Indian girls danced and cut down to the 
measure of the music — quite the prettiest sight that I had seen in 
many a day. They laughed and swayed and danced with all the 
abandon of otters at play; it was more fun than dancing oneself. 

I wondered about the mystery of the romance there — the Scan- 
danavian girl and the stoHd half-breed, as unlike as two mortals could 
be. Nor was I able to solve this little mystery, except in my imagina- 
tion, and this is no place for imaginative stories. 

All this shore was new ; every bay, island, point, channel and vista 
was different from all the other places. When I pulled out of Black 
Dock the next morning I went down among islands and through chan- 
nels, uncertain as to whether my course was true — and yet by the 
compass I was homeward bound. I passed islands and bays and lost 
my reckoning, but after a demonstration into a deep bay I saw the 
right course, and discovered the Hawk Island of the chart, which 
showed that I was on the right course toward Niplgon Straits — ■ 
Nipigon ! 

Oh, but to make that journey unhurried, with leisure to stroll and 
float and wander around! That would be splendid — that would be 
experience and satisfaction. But I was hurried. One does not linger 
and loiter with autumn at hand and the gales coming on apace. 

I glimpsed that long shore, but only as I leaned to my oars and 
pulled with persistance toward my far goal. I cut the corners, and 
crossed the mouths of bays. I went across the south end of a large 



In the Fishermen^s Camp. 101 

Island just inside of Lamb Island light, and then headed across 
Nipigon Strait — toward the head of Fluor Island. 

That island looked ugly and forbidding as I started toward it. 
The stone and the slide at the foot of the stone seemed a repulsing 
mass. I looked at the sky and at the wind rifts on the water before 
I started. I was tempted to go up into Nipigon Bay — but that was 
the long way round. Accordingly, I went straight across, wondering 
where I would make a landing, where I would get ashore if the wind 
should blow up in one of those sudden gales that all warned me about. 

With lots of time I should have waited around there a week, 
drinking in the sweetness of nature — but I had to hurry. I crossed 
the Strait with no experience except the helpless feeling that comes 
of realizing that a thin sided boat is all that is between one and the 
blue depths of the lake. On the way I crossed a shoal where the 
waves heaved up without breaking — a mountain on the lake bottom. 

On Fluor Island, they told me, there was a fisherman's camp, and 
I did not know if there were any other fishermen anywhere beyond 
there or not. Fluor island was miles long, miles wide, with jagged 
contour and outline. To find fishermen on it I would have been 
obliged to row all the way around it and up into deep bays. I did 
not try to do that. Instead I pulled down the east side and put out my 
trolling line. I had a strike or two, but caught no fish. 

Such lake water I never had seen, considering it as a mere trout 
proposition. I had caught brook trout in lakes, and they were there, 
I knew by the looks, and also by the leap of two or three as I came 
along. Flies were over the water and one brook trout rolled up that 
looked like three pounds or so — another occasion for longing for 
more time. I did not know but what I might find the fishermen there, 
but seeing nothing of them on Fluor Island I settled down for a long 
pull into some waters, I did not know where. As I pulled I saw 
something white flash down the south, in a little hook of a bay. 

I looked, puzzled, for it was flash — flash — flash. I started across 
to investigate, and then to my surprise, I spied camps up the bank. 1 
had found the fishermen on a little island near Fluor island — not on 
Fluor island as the directions had said. Where I turned to investigate 



102 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

was a little grassy creek, and this I learned later was Blind Channel, 
leading to Nipigon Bay. 

The white thing proved to be a little sailboat, owned by some 
kids. On the fish dock — and it smelled something terrible — were 
two Indian youths. They could not understand me, nor I understand 
them. 

I was in a pickle of doubt, for I could not tell where the next 
camp was, nor its distance. Somehow the idea of camping out alone 
on that weird shore bothered me. I didn't like to do it. It was some 
time before the Indians gesticulated toward a new camp and said: 
"Mrs. Willard— she talk!" 

In a new cabin, with tight screen doors, and clean as a peeled 
spruce, lived Mrs. Willard and her husband. She talked like a convent 
education and was comely and dignified — a woman who would not 
deny her Indian blood, for it added to her worth, without doubt. She 
could talk better English than I could talk, and if I could put down 
her words they would sound like a passage from Thackery, I'm sure, 
or, perhaps, from Stevenson. 

"Do you see that low island away down there? Right on that 
island you will find Frank Dampier, and he will set you on your right 
course, I am sure." 

She said it better than that, I know, and I should have waited to 
greet her husband, only I had no time — I must hurry, hurry, hurry 
on. A mile down the way I set up a snack and ate it, then pulled 
for the low island far down the island lane — miles and miles away — 
with a breeze freshing a bit, across the opening waters. 



CHAPTER IX. 
A Day With the Berry Pickers. 

AT Fluor Island, the Indians had canoes drawn up on the 
shore — birch bark canoes, which they had built of scalps 
of birch, cedar rib splints, and spruce gum glue. I had 
never seen canoes in their native land before — not birch 
bark ones, and I wanted to take my hat off to these crafts 
which looked as light as they were. They gave me something to 
think about as I pulled down the shore headed for the fisherman's 
camp somewhere on the low island, ten miles from Fluor Island. 

There had been something forbidding about the shore all the way 
down to this place from Fort William. There was a menace to the 
red rock blufifs, and a bitterness in the frowning, jagged islands — I 
had felt it all along, and now realized that I had sensed the reserve 
and repulse of the stones and the starved woods. 

But from Fluor Island onward for a ways, the islands were lower, 
the shores showed more beach, the character of the woods was less 
brittle and hard — the branches looked less like thorns and briars. It 
was such a place as I would expect the Indians to call "This is where 
we rest," or some such name. Certain it was that for ten miles, the 
invitation to camp down and enjoy the scene was like a voice. 

There were island shores all along the way, and the bays were 
sheltered, the channels narrow and comfortable — not the vast breadths 
of the lake and great bays. To the northward was the vast pile of St, 
Ignace island, with a shore full of nooks and crannies, and low points 
extended out from all directions. Here and there I could catch 
glimpses of the lake between islands, and as I neared the bay of Little 
St. Ignace Island, I had a few minutes of heavy sea among some 
jagged rocks that were just awash. Within the bay, it was quiet and 
serene, with low "picnic shores" extending in all directions, in a bay 
of wide repose and inviting havens. 

103 



104 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




A Day With the Berry Pickers. 105 

As far as I could see along those shores, there was sand beach 
and low forest, camping grounds for thousands, and one sail was in 
sight. It was reddish brown sails on a schooner of small size; the 
owner had dipped the sail in net tan to preserve it, and it made a very- 
pretty sail. I had my own sail up, and cruised that way, but the boat 
beat up the wind and out of sight, so I went on across toward the 
low island on which the fisherman was said to be camping. I spied a 
low craft and making toward it, was left far astern for it was a 
gasolene boat ; but it stopped at a net buoy, and I stopped there, wait- 
ing the return of the fishermen who were hauling a gill net in a punt. 

The fishermen were Frank" Dampier and his boy Charley, and 
they towed me to their camp, on the far side of the low island, and, 
of course, not on it, but across a bit of a bay on the point of Little St. 
Ignace island. Here there was a Httle cabin, the fisherman's, and a 
tent, belonging to berry pickers, and across the bay on gravel island, 
was another tent of berry pickers. When Dampier had heard who I 
was, and remembered hearing that I was coming along — gossip travels 
fast there on the North Shore — he said I'd better wait over a day and 
go in with Paulmart's tug, which would go to Rossport on Saturday. 

I would have preferred to row, but I was hurried, so I decided 
to take the tug, and I was two nights on Little St. Ignace. The place 
is alive with rabbits, and many partridges are on the island. There is 
a bit of clearing on the island point, and that is an old, old clearing. 
For years, perhaps hundreds of years, that was a camping ground, and 
some years ago, it was a settlement of fishermen, but the waters round 
about have been fished too hard, and the people have moved over to 
the railroad. Now it is Dampier's camp, and women folks come in 
sail boats and tugs to pick huckleberries, sand cranberries, and other 
kinds of cranberries which abound thereabouts. 

I heard some moose stories here — stories of riding a moose in 
the water in a punt, killing a moose with a hammer, of seeing seven- 
teen moose at once in one bay — all the stories, I think, that one hears 
in a big game country. Also I heard what wonderful shots some of 
them are in the North Country, dropping moose every whack at 600 
yards — apparently, 600 yards is the standard long range at which to 



lOG A Tkip on thk Great Lakes. 

drop a moose, and to shoot him behind the ear with a 22 short in the 
water at seven feet is the standard short range moose killing distance. 

In the morning, it was raining and there was a hard wind. The 
berry pickers were little daunted, however, and two women crossed 
to the gravel island pulling the oars' of the punt like veterans of the 
sea, though they were young. They returned in a few hours, wet 
as could be. Their tent had been set up without fore and aft guy lines, 
and it collapsed, but we men fixed it up for them, with trot line guys, 
and it stayed up. 

Tliis region is the happy cruising ground of all sorts of craft ; 
one man in a gasolene boat 18 feet long, another in a ca,r.oe, a third 
in a little sail boat, these are some of the lone travelers who make 
that shore. Campers come along in large launches and yachts, in sail 
boats and tugs and steamboats ; many pairs of campers and travelers 
come along in canoes, and other small boats. But it is so far from 
everywhere that in the aggregate few have time to get to that region. 
If any one has a desire to commune with nature, and desires to be 
alone, let him get into this North Shore, seek out some far back bay, 
and he may get through the summer with few or no visitors and no 
neighbors within miles and miles. 

In the fall and spring, during the migrations, the fishermen catch 
thousands of ducks in their fish nets along this shore — a hundred to 
three or four hundred at once, and there are those that think that 
in this way the game supply is being depleted. 

I found them talking about the migration of moose along the 
North Shore — how the moose had come along and driven the caribou 
and Virginia deer out of the woods ; or at least, the wolves that came 
with the moose drove out the caribou, and deer. Also, the wolves 
have interfered with the fur supply, treeing lynx and chasing them 
out of the country, and killing off the fishers, mostly the males, so 
that trappers get four or five female fishers to one male in their catch. 

In Paulmart's tug, with my skiff towing behind, I went to Rossport, 
in a considerable sea. Charley Dampier wanted to ride in the skiff, 
and lying back on the duffle, he went to sleep. The skiff jumped and 



A Day With the Berry Pickers. 107 

rolled, so much so that I was afraid it would capsize, but when I 
mentioned my fears to the father he remarked : 

"He's only got once to die, anyhow!" 

As a matter of fact, the old fishermen saw little to worry them 
in the waves that were rolling. At the wheel of the fish tug was 
Paulmart's boy, a lad of nine or ten years, steering by compass in 
the fog, and by the water ahead when the fog lifted. His father fired ; 
I could not help but exclaim my admiration for this part of the 
training of boys on the North Shore. Yet the sad part of it is that 
many of those North Shore lads are compelled to help their fathers, 
and are kept out of school to save deck hand and wheelman hire. 
The result is that the boys, some of the brightest and most capable in 
Canada are growing up scarcely able to read or write, and scarcely 
capable of competing with less able but better educated children. The 
father who cannot read or write, says what was good enough for him 
is good enough for his boys. 

Rossport was just a little settlement in an old burning beside the 
railroad — a store, a few houses and a fish dock or two, and a little 
hotel. I was here only over night, and then I went on in the morning 
in my rowboat, headed for Coldwell sixty or seventy miles down the 
coast. 

All this part of the lake shore is desolate. The railroad has burned 
off all the timber to save the expense of fire patrols who would have 
saved some millions of dollars worth of lumber and pulp. The jagged 
rocks showed above the shrubs and low second growth. It was a 
thoroughly disagreeable shore to look at, because there was the plain 
evidence of the folly and the greed of men. The Indians pick many 
berries on that barren, however, and as I rowed along, I saw man}- 
camps and little wigwams and cabins and shacks where Indians and 
other campers had stopped a while. A few of these camps were occu- 
pied, but once I rounded out at the Schrieber Point, there was scant 
sign of humanity anywhere. On the south was the broad lake and 
on the north the burned rocks. 

I rowed about twenty miles and then came to Black River, a stream 
that tumbles down over the rocks into a little sandbar bay in a larger 



108 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

bay, and here I camped for the night. I built a fire on the beach, and 
cooked supper. Then I thought of putting up my cot on the sand, 
but on second thought, I decided not to. I cast anchor and let the 
boat swing in the bay. I put up the waterproofed cloth on the hoops, 
and set up the cot inside. At dark, I rolled up in my blankets and 
went to sleep. One mistake I made. I had the muslin lap the wrong 
way, and the wind from the bow worked under the muslin and made 
cold chills creep over me until I had made the lap fish-scale-like from 
bow to stern. 

I had just gone nicely to sleep when suddenly, I sat up straight 
and wide awake, roused by a sound new to me — a noise that came 
through the roar of the waterfalls like a maul. I listened, and heard 
it again, a long, ascending howl that filled all that part of the land- 
scape with shudders. I made up my mind that this must be a wolf, 
though I had never heard a wolf. In the morning, when I went on 
the sandbar again, I found the track of a wolf, I think — about four 
inches across and like a dog, scuffling in the loose sand. 

It was so cold — the coldest night and the hardest freeze so far 
on the trip — that I rowed an hour or two before getting breakfast, 
and when the sun was well up, I went ashore to get the meal. Then 
I settled down to split the miles. I had no idea how far I could go 
that day, but as the morning went by, a west breeze sprang up and 
every stroke I pulled was helped by the wind. I cut the corners, 
going across from point to point, and when I came to L'Anse a la 
Boutilles, in mid afternoon, inside of Slate Islands, the choice opened 
before me of going thirty or forty miles around the shore of Mc- 
Kellar's Bay or heading straight across, twelve or fourteen miles to 
Pic Island strait. 

The wind was favorable, and the only question was would it be too 
strong before I got across? I was rowing, with the sail up, and after 
some calculation, I made up my mind that I could make it. Away I 
went, and the miles dropped behind me as on no other day in the 
row boat. I made the crossing in less than three hours — so much 
less that my rate of progress must have been more than six miles an 
hour, thanks to the sail. However, I was mighty glad to get under 



A Day With the Berry Pickers. 109 

the lee of Pic Island, for the wind increased slowly, and steadily, out 
of the southwest, and the boat was jumping when I entered the strait. 

In the calm of the strait, I took stock of the time, and found 
that I had time enough to make Port Coldwell, if I could find it. I 
settled down to a long stroke, shot through the shallow waters of 
Little Pic Island straits, and headed down the rock bluffs that lead 
north to Port Coldwell. Night was coming on rapidly, and I began 
to wonder if I was on the right course. I turned down into one bay, 
only to find nothing there, and just as I was making up my mind 
to go ashore and camp in the early twilight, a whiff of tainted wind 
came along. It carried the unmistakable odor of decaying fish, and 
I knew the town could not be far distant A minute later, I saw a 
steam tug come out of a gap, or split in a huge cliff, and went in 
through a canon, and there was Port Coldwell, — four houses, a fish 
dock and some net reels. So much for going by guess and by chart, 
and trying to read the water trails. I had rowed more than forty- 
miles this day, helped by three hours' sailing. It was the longest day's 
trip in the skiff, as events proved. 

In Port Coldwell I found camps of Indian berry pickers up near 
the railroad, and saw the Indian men and women bringing in their 
boxes and pails of berries. They received sixty cents a basket of about 
eight quarts, which enabled them to earn two or three dollars a day. 
One woman earned $4.00 a day, and some of the families could pick 
six or eight dollars worth of the berries a day. I could not help but 
compare their opportunities for amassing money and securing prop- 
erty with the spend-thrift way of their buying and wasting things. 
With all their earnings, they could not be sure but that in mid-winter, 
they would strike a rabbit famine and have to go hungry for a long 
while. They could not tell whether they would need canned fruit ; 
they put down no berries for winter use, but sold the wild berries and 
bought fruit in tin cans to eat in their tents and wigwams ! Such is 
their improvidence, their neglect and ignorance of the future. 

At Port Coldwell, I found another stroke of good luck waiting 
for me. By waiting over a day — and that day it stormed, — I would 
be able to go down the wild eastend coast of Lake Superior forty miles 



no 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




A Day With the Berry Pickers. Ill 

in a fish tug which happened to be going that way to try its hick. And 
this day of delay was a stormy one, on which I could hardly have 
moved at all. 

Surely the season was getting late, and a day on which I could 
travel was apt to be succeeded by a day of wind and storm — even by 
many days of gale and rain, as I soon was to discover. In a rising 
wind, came the little brown cruising launch, The Pirate, the hunting 
craft of Game Overseer Nuttall of Port Arthur, who watches all this 
coast from the American line around to Otter Head, 300 miles. Some- 
thing of his life is worth mentioning, if only as a warning to those 
who imagine the game protectors of the Dominion do not know all 
about the wilderness and that it would be easy to keep out of the way 
of the game laws. 



CHAPTER X. 

North Shore Game Overseers. 

GAME and Fish Overseer, A. W. Nuttall, with an assistant, 
Bert Spears — who had wondered who it was named 
Spears that wrote stories and articles for Camp & Trail 
and Hunter-Trader-Trapper, and now was surprised to 
meet him face to face, but no one need be surprised for 
writers for these publications are far-rangers — had just been down 
to Otter Head. They had started from Port Arthur and came along 
the coast, running into every nook and cranny and taking little tramps 
back up on the islands and mainlands. 

They knew me, for they had picked up my trail at Silver Island, 
and passed me somewhere along the route, perhaps through Nipigon 
Bay when I took the outside course. If I had been up to any mis- 
chief there and any one along the coast had known I was up to 
mischief, then the Game Overseer would at least have known about it. 
Mighty little escapes the attention of that North Shore game pro- 
tector, and one would better come pretty near being well acquainted 
with a locality before trying any short cuts with the game and fish 
laws there. 

It is a great life, the game protector leads. He scurries from 
bay to bay, through channels and straits and up rivers. He crosses 
islands on foot, and takes looks at moose wallows and bear holes and 
wolf runs — he keeps tab not only on the men who might violate the 
law, but on the wild life. He is an old trapper, and has caught many 
silver and black fo«es. He fished for market for a long time. He 
has mine claims of various kinds — a thoroughly busy man, Nuttall is 
one who knows his game protecting business, and he knows how to go 
about saving the game from butchery ; and yet he knows the difference 
between making the laws an oppression and a menace and keeping the 
laws in good order among the people of that wild land. If I were 

112 



North Shore Game Overseers. 113 

hungry and killed a moose, I imagine that the game protector would 
give me a lesson in economy as soon as he could get his hands on my 
collar. The lone traveler has no need of killing a moose; but if I 
should kill a rabbit or two and some partridges, even if I didn't have a 
hunting license, I should imagine that, far from a source of supplies, 
my indiscretion would be viewed according to the circumstances. 

But here the trespassers would better think twice before trusting 
to all game overseers. There are some good fellows among the game 
protectors — men who understand that game laws are for the benefit 
of humanity, and not for the benefit, particularly, of game. There are 
game protectors who would not hesitate to nab the man who, starving, 
had shot a grouse. There have been game protectors who, asked for 
a license to fish on Lizard Island, would send a sick man a hundred 
miles to Pilot Harbor, say. There was one game protector who 
served notice on the keeper of a lighthouse, fifty miles from the base 
of supplies, that the keeper must not set an old gill net for an 
occasional trout! This overseer arrested surveyors who killed grouse 
fifty miles back in the woods. 

But Game Protector Nuttall is not of that sort. He uses 
common sense in the enforcement of game laws, and if I had had a 
gun he would not have questioned my intelligence half as much as he 
did when he found that I was making the North Shore trip without 
a firearm of any sort. And yet, judging from what I heard, a gun or 
rifle in my skiff on another lake shore beat would have been regarded 
as ample cause for hauling me before a justice and making me as 
much trouble as a narrow mind and martinet heart could devise. 

Had I happened to meet Nuttall a few days back I would have had 
a long and informing trip with him along the coast, but as it was I 
had only a little talk with him. However, I had my tow down the 
northeast shore with Will Dampier, son of Frank Dampier, of Ross- 
port and Little St. Ignace, and learned much about the tug fishing 
business. Down this shore Nuttall had seen, on one little sand-bar 
near Swallow River, the tracks of a hundred wolves, as if they had 
come there for game or on a trail. 
7 



114 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




North Shore Game Overseers. 115 

With this bit of information in my head, I was not particularly 
anxious to camp down on the mainland along the lake shore. The 
wolves, I was told, were not at all apt to attack a man, or menace 
him, and yet there is always the chance that a pack will turn on a 
man; one would better be on the safe side. It is the height of folly 
to take a needless chance of any kind. 

With my skiff on the tug, and with a wind rising, we headed out 
of the Port Coldwell canyon and into the open lake, across to the 
northeast shore, striking it below Port Huron and Pic River, at 
which point the railroad strikes into the heart of the rocky desert 
and leaves the lake shore without settlement for more than a hundred 
miles, to Michipicoten. Some miles down the shore the timber 
covered the hills, but in places there had been forest fires and the 
timber was black and dead. There were no fishermen along here in 
cabins or camps, and only the tugs make occasional visits along the 
coast at this time of the year. A little later, perhaps, some trapper 
would appear and make his headquarters there, but it is such a far 
place from anywhere that few visit it, and the Winter frequently 
finds only a man or two along the whole coast from Pic River Mission 
to Michipicoten. 

In fact, a few years ago, the Wilsons, father and son, found that 
for many years there had been no trapper along forty or fifty miles 
of the coast, and they came there to trap. They caught many thou- 
sands of dollars worth of fur, some placing the figures as high as 
$25,000 in five years, including mink, marten, fisher, lynx and foxes, 
but only one silver fox. Their trapping ended in tragedy, however, 
for the son found the father dead in one of the line wigwams a year 
ago last March on his trapping rounds. It is so far from anywhere 
that few could or would venture to spend the Winter there, and yet 
occasionally a tenderfoot comes to the coast with sad results. 

We went into several bays, many splendid harbors for shelter of 
small craft, and in the course of the day got down to Spruce Bay, or 
Triangle Harbor, where we anchored for the night. It was a lonely 
bay, surrounded by woods with a narrow entrance. A cabin that had 
stood on the shore was burned down, and the open was growing up 



116 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

to brush. Five miles beyond, on Otter Island, was a lighthouse, and 
in the morning, as the fish tug started back along the shore to Port 
Coldwell, I rowed down to Otter Island. 

It was a pretty morning, with a little breeze, and I thought that I 
would get far that day. I crossed to the island, two miles, just to say 
"good morning," and perhaps stay an hour gossiping. There was no 
one in the cottage, so I circled the cottage to find the path to the 
light. I found a track in the briers, which I thought was a cow track, 
and then I struck the trail to the lighthouse on the point of the island. 
The lighthouse was empty, so I returned and found a man gazing at 
the skiff. He had been out after firewood, he said, and his name was 
Capt. McEneny, the keeper. I told him who I was, and then he said : 

*T wasn't expecting you for a week or ten days !" 

The game overseer, Nuttall, had told him I was coming but my 
tow into Rossport and ride down to Triangle had speeded me on my 
way. We talked awhile and then I said I guessed I'd better be 
moving on. 

"No," he said, "I don't think you will, not for a few days. You 
see, there is a big storm coming and the wind has come up a good deal 
—look!" 

He pointed out on the lake, and there was the flashing white of 
waves rolling against the rocks, and as far as I could see through the 
narrow pass out to the wide spaces the water was flecked with 
whitecaps. In an hour the barometer's threat had made good — and 
the lighthouse keeper knew what to expect, and I did not. 

A long storm had set in. I had arrived just in time at the most 
comfortable place on 110 miles of shore to wait the passing of the 
storm. Capt. McEneny had lived on that island during the months 
of navigation for many years, and he knew what had taken place 
along that savage coast, if any one did. He was a good host. 

I asked about his cows and he stared at me. 

"I have no cows — " 

"But I saw their tracks up there in your back yard !" 

"Let us go look at those cow tracks," he said, so we went to 
look, and when I had picked up the trail again, he said that it was 



North Shore Game Overseers. 



Ill 






^"-- ^-- ^s..^f^m^m^^-}m^^: 



OTTER ISLAND LIGHT. 



118 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

caribou. During the Spring he killed three wolves in the clearing, 
one from his bedroom window and two from the side door. There 
were seven in the pack, probably a litter of some she wolf that came 
across to the island on the ice. 

There could have been no surer indication of the loneliness of 
our situation, there on that island, as a southwester came swaggering 
up over the vast breadth of Lake Superior. The waves rolled in and 
exploded against the jagged s-tone, or broke over the steep slopes of 
the sands. The wind hissed and whined through the stiff evergreen 
tree branches, and an occasional gull or crow sailed into the storm. 
The lighthouse keeper said that it was fifty-five miles to the nearest 
base of supplies, and that night there were no other men along 
a hundred miles of coast. 

It is too far for most people to go there; it is too wild for the 
tenderfoot, too desolate for the average sportsman, too dangerous for 
most lone hunters, and yet some few do go there to be next to 
Nature and to enjoy the sport that is to be had there. A few 
gasoline boats, an occasional sailing yacht, a canoeman — these are the 
men who visit that northeast shore. They catch large trout, mostly. 
None of them go there for fun in the autumn, when the hunting 
season is on — it would not be safe for the ordinary boatman and 
woodsroamer. 

Two men came there a year ago to trap in those woods, having 
heard of the luck of the Wilsons. They brought No. traps by the 
score, and they had a few traps of larger size. The Wilsons had 
used double springs almost, if not quite exclusively. The two new- 
comers ran out of grub along in late February, though the land is 
alive with rabbits, and they came to the lighthouse and went in. When 
the keeper arrived there in April he found that they had eaten a 
hundred pounds of flour, beans, peas, bacon, salt pork — had eaten 
nearly all his supplies, in fact. What they would have done without 
them it is hard to say. They had no fur, apparently, and they 
were in a leaky little skiff. 

Imagine the ignorance and folly of two men who came to a 
Winter coast inaccessible for months, without enough food to see them 



North Shore Game Overseers. 119 

through, and improperly equipped for the trapping they had to do — 
No. traps for fisher! Of course, any trap in that country is Hkely 
to get a fisher, lynx, marten, mink — and one cannot use the little 
traps, except on muskrats, and even for those No. Jumps are pretty 
small. Wolves menace the trapper; bears are found along that shore 
— no tenderfoot, no mere muskrat and skunk trapper should venture 
there. 

On this shore, as in other parts of the real trapping country, a 
trapper who runs out his lines is free from the lines of other trappers. 
There is little or no trespassing on one another's trapping grounds, 
and the foreign trapper — the American — must pay $20 trapping- 
license. Much of the country is covered by Indian, half-breed and 
white men lines, and a trapper thinking of going to that region would 
do well first to look the country over and talk to other trappers of 
the locality before going in to put up cabins and making trails. 

Trappers of that land go to their country in late August or early 
September to get ready for the Winter. They cut trails, build a 
main camp and line wigwams, cut firewood, make fish scent baits, build 
trap cubbies and dig root cellars for potatoes, cabbages, etc. After 
the lines are established and the traps distributed, the trappers — two 
together — are able to make money the second year and need not 
go in so early in the season. It costs about $600 to outfit two trappers 
for a North Shore trapping campaign, and this means only a little 
boat; one slaould have a staunch gasoline cabin boat, small enough to 
haul up the bank for the Winter, but many trappers use only small 
sailboats. 



CHAPTER XI. 
A Desolate Abode. 

1AM not sure but what I should like to be a lighthouse-keeper 
on some bleak shore for a summer. One lights the oil lamp 
at night and blows it out in the morning; that is the work to 
be done for the government. Besides, one must sometimes paint 
the buildings, and keep them clean. Wood for the fires must 
be collected during the calm weather, from the drift along the shore. 
There is cooking and washing and scrubbing out once in a while. 
Perhaps, all told, there are three hours work a day the season through. 
That leaves twenty-one hours for sleep and other things. The 
other things to do are numerous; fishing till one is sick of it; gather- 
ing gull eggs in season; picking berries in season; killing a bird or 
other game for potpies from time to time; reading, if one has 
books; studying nature, if one has the inclination; doing one's own 
work if there is work one can do there. 

I do not imagine that women folks would like to be on an 
island; there are many good business opportunities along the North 
Shore, which promise good money, but the owners have wives who 
cannot stand the desolation of the bleak stones and the evergreen 
wilderness, the loneliness and lack of companionship. Capt.' McEneny 
carried a broom stick with him when he crossed to the light, night- 
and morning, 

"It is to keep the wolves off!" he explained. That tells in brief 
emphasis the condition on the island. 

I found here plenty of emphasis of the storm phase of Lake 
Superior life. The wind blew steadily, working around a little to the 
west and almost to the northwest in the course of days. The 
barometer in the cottage held around 29J, and the man shook his 
head as he watched the waverings of the needle. 

"I'm glad of your company," he said, "But the first fair day, 

120 



A Desolate Abode. 121 

you'd better pull down the shore. There may not be two fair days 
for a month, this time of the year. I've seen gale follow gale day 
after day!" 

This gale lasted from September 20 through to September 27, 
or seven days. During those seven days I found the question of 
food supply bothering me. I had about twelve or fifteen days' sup- 
plies, but they were flour, potatoes, and bacon, nothing fancy, but 
mere rations. To make up the difference between what I had and 
what the Captain set up, I went forth and got fresh meat; it was a 
case of necessity, and I felt justified in shooting a bit, even if I was 
a non-resident. I got what we needed for some potpies, and there 
were plenty of fish in the lake, which gave us variety. I could cook 
and so could the Captain. We got along well together. 

One day I crossed the bay, which was partly sheltered from the 
wind, and landed at Twin Falls, hauled my boat up and went inland. 
I wanted to see what kind of a country it was in back. There was 
a trail from the top of the rocks, over one of the old Wilson trap 
lines, and I looked for it. It was a climb of a hundred feet to the 
top of the rocks, and then I found myself in a spruce thicket. The 
trees stood hardly a foot apart in places, and it was as much like an 
Adirondack balsam swamp as anything else, including some of the 
balsams. 

I could see hardly twenty feet in places, and' in the opens, bare 
rocks, and boulders obstructed the view. I did not find the trail, 
at first, but as I was following the lay of the land up a sort of flat 
between two cliffs of rocks, I discovered a blaze mark on a tree, and 
with this to work from I soon had the trail under foot. 

It was five or six years old, but had been re-blazed here and 
there by some summer sportsman, and even a few wind-falls and 
brush had been trimmed out. The trapper Wilson who made the 
trail, had trimmed it out a good deal, evidently having tramped 
along, ax in hand. I followed it back for several hours, and it was 
a good trail to walk over, and easy to follow, as it led along the 
crest of the river bank, which here was a hundred feet or more high. 

The woods seemed to have lots of partridges, but I saw no 



^22 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




A TRAPPER'S BARK WIGWAM. 




THE RETURN TRIP ALONG THE 1^ 




:th kSHore of lake superior. 



A Desolate Abode. 127 

rabbits. The moose and caribou had been through there recently, as 
I now could tell by their trails. I saw fur sign, too, fisher I think, 
and marten, and on the river rocks, mink. But it was a hard hunting 
country. The timber was so thick that I had to turn sideways to 
get between some trees, and the limbs were so thick that I could 
see only a few yards, except in occasional clumps of hardwood — birch 
— where the leaves hanging on screened the distances. The leaves 
were turning yellow, however, and ten days later, I surely would 
have been glad to tramp those woods with a good rifle. 

It was not hard to stillhunt, but with thick leather soles on my 
shoes I made noise, of course, and getting near big game would have 
been an accident, and yet once I heard the rush of some animal a 
little ways from me that must have been a bull, for I could hear 
the horns striking, as I had heard deer horns in thick cover in my 
own country. 

This ten or twelve mile walk in the thick timber told me more 
about the woods than any number of miles coasting along the shore 
could have done, and when I returned I had a very definite idea 
of the "feel" of the Canadian wilderness — woodsmen know what I 
mean. One likes to try the woods just as a man likes to try the 
rifle that is new, or the fishrod that he joints up. But for a real 
try, I would have been obliged to carry a good carbine rifle — a 
carbine is certainly the best barrel length to carry in that kind of 
timber — and get a whack at some one of those huge creatures with 
tracks half a foot, more or less, across. 

I came back to the top of the rocks, and a blast of wind 
struck me in the face, once I was clear of the timber. I had not 
noticed the rising of the wind; the gale had shifted around, and 
now the waves were pounding in on the beach where I had landed. 
When I got down to the boat, the waves were rolling up and throw- 
ing some over the stern of the skifT, although I had drawn it up 
a good ways. 

I was in a pretty pickle, with no shelter, a little lunch, two or 
three birds, and a pounding in of waves. I looked at those waves, 
and at first did not dare to try to launch my skif¥ in them. I went 



128 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

for a walk through one of those knee-deep mossy swamps and re- 
turned in an hour, to find the wind»slowly rising, and the appearance 
of a rain storm setting in. I might be there a week, if I didn't get 
across to the cottage. I must make a try to get across, or else build 
.a shelter there, and draw my belt tighter for my forthcoming meals. 

In the Twin Falls bay is a large gull rock, and the waves were 
breaking over these, but my boat, behind these rocks caught only the 
sidewash when I shoved out to try the sea. Then I watched my 
chance, and when the three big waves of a sea had broken in, I 
pulled out and headed into the little waves that followed — little ! The 
first one broke over the bow of the skiff and solid water shot across 
the little deck and hit me in the back like a saw log, cold and clammy. 
I pulled, and the next wave was a little less, and then I rode the 
next breaker in safety, and got out in the swell, where my boat 
would have ridden them had they been twelve feet high, so long as 
they did not break too bad. 

Well, I pulled across to the island against the wind and was 
right glad to get under the lee, and into the little harbor of Otter 
Island; when I was in dry clothes before the warm fire, I felt that 
it had been a first class day for seeing the sights. 

On the morning of September 27, Friday, we awakened to find 
the ground and trees covered with snow, and the wind, what there 
was of it, coming out of the north, but varying. The barometer, 
which had been easing up slowly, indicated fair weather. When I 
crossed to the lighthouse, to blow out the light, saving the Captain 
that trip, the dark Lake Superior was heaving with the dead sea 
after the storm. Along the miles of rocky coast, the waves were burst- 
ing and flashing white — but there was no wind, and the beaver weather 
vane on the lighthouse did not utter a squeak or tiny shriek. 

It was too rough to start out, but the waves subsided as the 
morning wore away, and I cleaned off the snow on my boat, and 
bailed it out, packed up and made ready to go, and after an 11 o'clock 
dinner, I started down the bay, toward Otter cover and faced the 
long, bare shore that reaches to Michipicoten and the "Soo." 

The first dip to the waves was a heavy one, for in the gap, and 



A Desolate Abode. 129 

over the shoals, the waves heaved up, but after I had taken the 
sea a little while, and tried the boat in the trough — for I must row 
in the trough of the seas that day — I saw that I could make it. I 
knew that in another day there might be a wind. I must make all 
the speed I could — which was not much for I had to take the seas 
quartering, and take a "Z" or "W" Hke course in places. 

If at first I was nervous and doubtful, before long I was rejoic- 
ing in the swing and swagger of the sea, and in the cold loneliness 
of the shore. I knew there were some cabins, trappers and fishermen 
having built them, but I knew too, that night might overtake me on 
a barren beach where I must sleep in the open, cold or no cold. 

I came to Pukaso, and rowed in the bay to look at the pulp camp 
cabins, now empty and deserted. Then I went on down the coast, 
out of the good harbor there, making the most of the breeze and the 
falling sea. 

Suddenly, it began to grow dusky, for it was a cloudy day, with 
only a little sunshine now and then. Night was coming on, and I 
was off a tumble of stone, with sand bay gaps in between. I could 
not tell where to land, but as I rowed along, just outside the breaker 
lines, I looked for some kind of a cabin, or even a good place to 
camp. I figured that I must be near Pilot Harbor — Old Pilot Harbor 
— but I saw no place worthy of such a dignified name. Finally, I 
spied some gull rocks, and after a close inspection, I saw that behind 
them there must be some kind of a little harbor. 

I pulled toward them, expecting to camp on the bare beach, 
but before I reached the rocks, I saw a gray surface above the stone, 
and then the familiar color of an old cabin, or shanty. The North 
Shore Manitou had taken me into a trapper's shanty, after all, and 
when I landed, and looked it over, I found it was dry, contained an 
old stove and pipe — it was good enough for anybody. 

I did not know whose cabin this was, but it had been used dur- 
ing the summer, probably by sports, for tents had been pitched just 
behind it, and a tripod fire place fixed, a brouse bed laid down, and 
other fancy things prepared. The beach was only a few rods long, 
half or more of it behind gull rocks. On the beach were cords of 



130 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




A Desolate Abode. 131 

drift wood. In the cabin were old, dry boughs, rabbit-gnawed floor- 
ing, a very rusty stove pipe and stove. When I put up the pipe, 1 
found that it was just a bit too short, but a rusty section of old pipe 
bent on the top of the other pipe reached to the tin pipe-hole, enough 
to balance it. I cut a pole, braced it behind the stove, and with 
brass partridge snare wire, lashed the pipe upright to the pole, so it 
would stand up. 

I gathered twenty armsful of chunks and sticks and drift wood 
for the fire, and the warmth was most welcome as the last twilight 
faded. The smoke poured out the chimney and out the stove, but 
the cabin builder had left one plank off the roof along the front 
wall, and this drew the smoke out. By candle light, I set up my 
folding cot, ate my supper and prepared for the night. 

Behind the cabin, twenty feet away, the woods came down to 
the cobble beach, and in front of it, beyond the gull rocks, heaved 
the unresting lake. Between roars of the bursting waves, I fancied 
that I heard the low moan of the wilderness, and once, in the night, 
between stokings of the fire, I started from my slumbers with the 
feeling that some visitor was in the edge of the woods, prowling 
around the cabin, uttering some low grunt and growl of inquiry — I 
could not tell for certain. Again, there came through the darkness, 
riding the crash of the waves, so to speak, a trembling wavering 
soHnd, which suggested the howl of that lone wolf at Black river — 
perhaps it was a wolf howl. My ears are not very good, and per- 
haps I hear things that aren't so, as often I fail to hear things th^t 
are so. 

Neither the Mississippi Bottoms, nor the mid-winter Adirondack 
woods depths, nor the lonely mountain ridges of Tennessee, nor any 
other place that I have ever been, yields just such feelings as I found 
there in that little cabin — Dave Catasson's cabin, I heard it was after- 
wards. Regularly, every hour and a half, the fire had to be built 
up again, for it was freezing cold, and when I looked out across the 
gray sea it was with a sense of isolation and loneliness I had not 
had before. I was on the brim of the pit of the sweet-water sea. 



132 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

and at the edge of the vast and pathless desert of stone and forest 
— I need not say that it was exhilerating. 

I slept a little late in the morning, but soon after 7 o'clock I 
launched my boat and rowed out into as fair a day as it has ever 
been my lot to witness. There was no wind, but only the very faintest 
of zephyrs. The dead sea heaved and washed along the rock shores, 
of course, but the boat moved in glassy calm, as it swayed to the 
lift of the waves. I had, I supposed, about twenty-five miles to go 
to Dog river, and forty-five to Michipicoten. I thought that this 
cabin was at Pilot Harbor, but an hour after I started, I came to 
that harbor. 

As I came past it, I spied a motor boat coming up the shore, 
and a few minutes later the boat went by, heavy laden with supplies, 
and with two men on board. This was Prospector Ross Hamilton, 
with a mining expert, going to look into a mine claim ten miles 
back from Otter Cove. Hamilton expected to winter on that shore, 
probably, but we neither of us had time to more than wave our 
hands in passing. When his boat went out of sight up the coast 
a little later, I turned my eyes to the scenery again — a shore varied 
between stone and sand, gravel and cobbles, little bays and flat points 
where one could not land for the rocks. 

On one sand bank, I saw a red fox with a tail almost all white, 
wandering along. I hailed him, and he turned to look at me. After 
a minute inspection of each other, he continued along the shore, and 
I rowed on past seventy or eighty yards distant. Twelve or fifteen 
miles off shore was Michipicoten Island, looming blue and huge out 
of the glassy and mirage-raising surface. I could not tell just where 
I was, for the shore is so unbroken that it was difficult to recognize 
any point or bay — yet it was very essential for me to know where 
I was. 

Somewhere along this shore was a ten mile stretch of coast 
where the chart makers had written "No boat landing". I had looked 
ahead to this place with dread from the day I left Fort William; 
I feared I might be caught along there in a sudden squall or on- 



A Desolate Abode. 133 

shore wind. I pulled hard to pass it by that day, and yet watched 
the sky and water ceaselessly. What breeze there was was on-shore 
— it might blast up into a gale. It was the finest possible kind of 
day — and yet, No Boat Landing was ahead of me, the dread spot of 
the whole journey. 



CHAPTER XII. 
A Small Rifle Country. 

THERE is one exasperating and unnecessary fault of the 
charts of the Great Lakes. They seldom, or never, show 
the lay of the land. On this trip along the shores, time 
and again, an indication of the height of the land at point 
and bay would have saved considerable puzzling, and that 
day along the shore, approaching No Boat Landing, doubt after doubt 
would have been saved, if there had been height of land indications. 
Always I was looking ahead, thinking to see Point Isacor, and point 
after point I mistook for the beginning of No Boat Landing. There 
was no need of all this; Point Isacor loomed unmistakably when at 
last I came in sight of it, but there were long miles of shore where I 
could not tell whether I was entering the No Boat Landing section. 
Once I was sure I had come to it — a long bank of steep rocks and 
bayless shore, but when I rounded the next point, there were plenty 
of boat landings' anywhere along the way. Finally I saw the huge pile 
of rocky ridge that must be Point Isacor, and in the bay west of it — I 
was going east along the shore — I found cabins. I had not expected 
any more cabins along that shore till I reached Dog River. 

They were trappers' cabins — two cabins and two wigwams together 
in the woods at the top of a sand beach. A little further along was an 
old shack that had fallen in, and in the old clearing there was the thing 
that never fails to excite melancholy reflections, and a slight tremor 
of sadness, a little picket fence that marks a grave on that terrible 
shore. Somehow, it seemed harder to die and be buried there, so far 
from everyone — yet there are many of those graves on that shore and 
in those woods, some of them long forgotten heroes of the old fur- 
trade days, and one, at least, of modern fur-trade significance, that of 
Old Man Wilson, who lies in the floor of his wigwam, where his son 
found him dead a year ago last Winter, thirty miles back from the 



A Small Rifle Country, 



1S5 




136 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

lake. It seems hard, of course, and yet where would a good outdoor 
man rather go into his eternal sleep than in the heart of the wilderness, 
where the birds sing their matins over his grave, where the squirrels 
romp among the branches of the tree that is his headstone, where the 
fox and wolf, passing by, pause to do homage at the tomb of their 
fellow? 

Along the foot of Point Isacor the dead sea broke in low waves, 
bursting against the stones. Beyond the point I knew was the No 
Boat Landing, and with the thought that for ten miles I must follow a 
shore where I would certainly lose my boat, in case of a sudden 
squall — there were low banks of black cloud down the south and west — 
I made my way out to the point. 

Just beyond the point was a little sandbar, and I thought that was 
the last harbor I could make. Beyond the next point I saw some more 
sand — and one of the vast, magnificent sweeps of Lake Superior's 
varied shore. There rose the ridge of stone hundreds of feet high, 
and very nearly perpendicular, with trees clinging along the face of the 
bluff, and a peregrine falcon hovering along the bank of gray stone. In 
a great sweep, ten miles long, that ridge curved around the lake shore, 
and for a few minutes it seemed as though there was no boat landing 
there, and my heart sank as I looked at those dark clouds and at that 
frowning mass of stone. 

But when I looked along the water's edge I saw that there were 
pretty beaches of sand, that there were clumps of trees and brush at the 
foot of the heights, and that I could land every few rods and with my 
light rowboat I could get ashore anywhere, and haul it up out of the 
way of the highest seas that might beat against the foot of the moun- 
tain ridge. In a moment that part of the lake shore was robbed of its 
terrors, but, of course, for one in a large boat, in a sail boat or launch, 
or even a life boat too heavy to drag up out of the wash and pound of 
the sea, there was no boat landing. 

The curve was a mile or more deep, but I struck straight across 
from Point Isacor to a low, wooded point I could see miles away over 
the water, lifted by the mirage above the surface, and rowed for Dog 
River, which I knew must be somewhere along that shore. I rowed a 



A Small Rifle Country. 137 

long, hard stroke, and in about two hours, perhaps a little more, I had 
passed No Boat Landing, and as I rounded a little point I heard a shot, 
and looking, saw an Indian squaw, gun in hand, watching a wavering 
bird in a little bay. 

I had reached Dog River settlement, and I turned in. As I 
rounded in, I saw a net reel and a man spreading a net on it. I rowed 
in to him, and he proved to be William Newman, the wolf trapper and 
fisherman who writes an occasional letter to Hunter-Trader-Trapper 
from this North Shore wilderness — a place of loneliness and despair 
for another man, but for him home and happiness. Years ago, the 
doctors told him he could not live a year, and he is not well even now, 
but like the out-door men of the world, he does not think of his 
operations and pains. He refuses to go to the "comfort" of towns and 
paved streets, and this Winter, alone, he has removed up the coast 
from Dog River to Pukaso or thereabouts, set out his steel wolf traps, 
laid in his supplies and settled down to listen to the sweet music of the 
cold wind, to the thrilling refrain of the hunting wolf pack and to the 
crash of the frost in the timber and the ice. 

He had traveled far, through the West and Middle West, and had 
trapped in many states; at the end of the day on a trap line or hauling 
a fish net, he stretches out on his bough bed, covered with blankets and 
reads his H-T-T, C & T or other magazines that are passed along that 
coast from camp to camp, from lighthouse to lighthouse, to be read 
from cover to cover — advertisements, stories, letters and all. Some- 
times I wonder if the men writing in their little cabins — Newman has 
written for the Pleasure and Profit Pair — realize with what avidity 
their words are picked up in just such far places as the mouth of Dog 
River, Otter Island, Pukaso Harbor, Little Gros Cap Light. 

The black clouds which hovered at the horizon all that day came up 
that night and snow and wind were in them. In the morning there was 
a gale blowing, but toward noon it had subsided, and I was able to pull 
away down the coast toward Michipicoten, and I knew by this time 
that it would be foolhardy to attempt to row clear down to the Soo at 
that time of the year. I might even be held a week on the eighteen 
miles from Dog River to Michipicoten. 



138 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

Little puffs of wind came and made me hug along the shore, ready 
to jump to the sand, but I reached the Mission above Little Gros Cap 
without mishap. There, however, a squall came up, blowing harder 
and harder, so that when I went out to round the Cap, I was tossed 
and pitched so that I knew it was far from safe going around the 
point, where the waves are sure to be worst of all. I ducked back into 
a little bay, and then crawled along the shore back to the Mission, 
where the old Indian chief called my attention to the fact that the wind 
had gone down a good deal and that as he had gone around the Cap in 
a much worse sea than was now running, I could do it in my boat. In 
the morning, he said, the storm would be much worse, as the black 
West showed. 

So I pulled out, and in the gathering dusk, among waves that were 
the highest I had yet encountered — so high that at times I was several 
feet below their crests, in the trough, I rounded Little Gros Cap and 
rounded in at the boathouse of the light there. The house was built on 
rocks, but I watched my chance and ran in, leaped out and hauled the 
skiff up on the smooth rocks, and went up to the lighthouse to see 
William Richardson, the keeper, who has for more than twenty years 
lived along that shore, and who has a harbor, Richardson's, named after 
him. Hunter, trapper, fisherman, boat builder, he has lived the life of 
an outdoor man and probably understands the shore from Otter Island 
to the Soo better than any other man. I had a fishing license to give 
him, he having forgotten it at Newman's, where he had been fishing for 
two or three weeks. His wife, a girl and a relative were at the light, 
but he was not there, having crossed to Gargantua in a fish tug. 

I remained here two nights, and on the second night Richardson 
showed up about 9 o'clock, almost starved, for he hadn't had anything 
to eat but rabbits, partridges and trout for two days, except that they 
had flour on the boat and made flapjacks without baking powder. 

I had thought to find here a large settlement, but there was only a 
store, a few houses, a steamboat landing, and the end of a railroad that 
led to a mine twelve miles back, where several hundred men are em- 
ployed. This road has just been connected with a road that runs north 
from the Soo, clear up to the main transcontinental line, but the country 



A Small Rifle Country. 



139 




140 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

will never be much less of a wilderness than it is now. Perhaps opening 
of mines and pulp cutting jobs will cause the thinning out of the game, 
but that will be all. Some sportsmen get up this far now, but they 
cannot get far from Michipicoten in the hunting season. 

The coming of the moose and wolves east along the North Shore 
has changed the character of the hunting a great deal. Formerly it was 
all deer hunting, with occasional caribou, but now these animals are 
gone, or going. The hunters do not like the moose, for they are too 
large. There is a conscience in the woodsmen that goes against the 
wasting of the game meat. The trappers kill few of the moose and 
they are very plenty. Newman told me about seeing twelve or fourteen 
on one day setting out his line of traps. 

A moose is not a good animal to fool around. Two timber lookers 
were going up a little river down the coast and came to a little lake 
where a moose was feeding. One of them had a little 22 rifle and 
"pricked" the moose with one of the bullets — 22 short. The moose 
charged them, and the water was so shoal that he could come on the 
gallop. They dodged and paddled around, seeking deep water, but there 
was none, and the brute drove them into trees and charged back and 
forth from one to the other whenever one made a noise. 

The riflemen had two boxes of 22 shorts, and he kept shooting at 
the huge beast and finally, with only three or four bullets remaining, he 
found a joint in the animal's neck and killed it. 

This is a small rifle country — the 22 caliber is the most popular rifle 
there. It is "the meat gun" and the "bait gun." Trappers of the 
country discard their 30-30s, their army rifles and their big shotguns for 
the little twenty-two. Rabbits and partridges are the staple baits and 
foods of the wilds, and with a twenty-two one is able to kill all he needs 
to eat. I suppose that the 22 Winchester is the best gun for the country, 
but perhaps it would be hard to get cartridges. The standard is the 
22 short and 22 long repeater. Trappers carry in thousands of cart- 
ridges and soon kill their rabbits running, their partridges flying, if 
need be. 

For protection against wolves and in any case of need, they have 
one or other of the automatic pistols with long barrels and stocks; 







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A Small Rifle Country. 145 

automatic firearms for game are forbidden in Canada, but not for pro- 
tection. The Marble Game Getter has many ardent champions, and I 
saw among the boys a lot of the little single shot 22s. An Indian boy, 
eight or nine years of age, bought a 22 of Lighthouse Keeper Blondin, 
at Port Coldwell, and on the way home with it met a bull moose, which 
the boy shot dead at a range of eight or nine feet. 

If one wants an arsenal, a light shotgun, a moose rifle and a 22 
rifle are enough, but the 22 caliber is the best all around gun there is for 
the Lake Superior shore, according to the woodsmen there. I should 
take a 25-35 carbine and a 22 caliber repeater if I were going there to 
hunt for fun, and on a trap line I should carry a 22 caliber Winchester 
for meat and an automatic high power pistol with stock for wolf or 
mad bull moose. In any event, the 22 caliber is a necessity, and cart- 
ridges by the hundreds should be carried. 

My trip was now at an end, so far as the outdoors was concerned. 
I left Little Gros Cap light at noon on October 1 and rowed down to 
Michipicoten, a mile, and late in the afternoon went aboard the steamer 
for the Soo, uncertain as to how I should go home. At the Soo the 
following day, I decided to keep right on down the North Channel and 
through Georgian Bay to Owen Sound, where I went to the American 
consul and on showing my cruising permit, issued by the Canadian 
customs officials, I got a re-entry permit for my boat and American 
outfit of camping duffle. These I turned over to the railroad and they 
took the boat in charge while I went on the train to Buffalo and east- 
ward home. 

I had seen four of the five Great Lakes, traveling them from end 
to end, going on freighter and passenger, and mixed passenger and 
freight boat, been on cabin passage, steerage, and worked my way on a 
tow boat, gone by fish tug, row boat and, for a little ways, gasoline. 
The total expense was something under $200, including $40 for the 
boat. I was gone about 76 days. Special objects compelled me to go to 
expenses that on another would not have to meet, however, and by 
going straight to Fort William and cruising down the lakes, consider- 
able expense would be saved. 



14G A Trip on the Great Lake^. 

Two making the trip together and starting early in the season could 
coast in a skiff or launch from Fort William to the St. Lawrence, 
camping out on the way, with much less expense to each than one could 
do the trip. I was right glad to get home again, too. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
North Shore Fur Pockets — No. i. 

A Trapper Pirate. 

THIS is a story of good luck on the trap line. It is the tale 
of men who found lost corners in the wilderness, where 
fur-bearers were plenty and no one knew it. Men who 
venture are the men who gain in trapping; they find the 
silver foxes, and they find the rich, dark marten and mink. 
They pick up lynx and fishers. 

Yet they take chances to find this fur and to get it. This is 
not the story of men who took chances, and lost. We all know that 
where one trapper finds fur in great plenty, and makes a small for- 
tune, a score of trappers lose out. They fail to find good trapping; 
they fail to make money, and sometimes they fail to come out alive. 
Many a trapper has found a fur pocket, and then lost out — died or 
starved almost to death. 

Along the north shore of Lake Superior there are more stories 
of men who found fur pockets than I ever heard of anywhere else. 
In my note books that I kept along that north shore, there are stories 
of men who discovered corners in the wilderness where fur had for- 
gotten the smell of steel and where all the crippled toe animals were 
dead. Think of the trapper who caught twelve silver and black foxes 
in one campaign on an island ! That is one of the things I have to 
tell about. 

Only I want to make certain that no one who has not had much 
experience, who is not hardy and strong, who has little knowledge of 
deep wilderness and wide waters undertakes to go and get rich on 
"the terrible north shore." Be certain to observe, that when I say 
a man found a "fur pocket" at a certain place, that that fur pocket 
no longer exists. Another fur pocket may be within ten miles of 

147 



148 A Trip on the Great Lakes 

there, but again, it may be fifty miles through terrible desert — tim- 
berland and stone desert — to another pocket. 

However, on the other hand, if I were going to trap all winter, 
I should spend a summer along the north shore of Lake Superior 
looking for a fur pocket. I should go there, prospecting for fur, just 
as some men prospect for timber, for gold, for iron and for other 
natural fortunes. 

One hears of fur pockets on the north shore, just as he hears 
of killing two deer at once, in a deer country, or a big bag of rab- 
bits where cotton tails are plenty. There is game, lots of it, alopg 
the north shore, but it is from fur that the wilderness men there 
make their money; they poison wolves, and draw bounties; they run 
lines of traps through the wilderness and catch mink, marten, fishers, 
foxes, and other furs. The country is a land of trappers; nearly 
every one sets traps ; there are Indian, half-breed and white trappers. 
There are some of the cleverest trappers in the world who live in 
the little settlements along the north shore. One who goes there to 
trap, comes in competition with men who know how to trap. 

A good deal of the trapping country is covered by the years' old 
trap lines of old fur catchers. In this country, there are no Johnny 
Sneakums, and there is no stealing of one's own trapping country. 
It is his". Thus, if one goes there trapping, he must be sure and 
ascertain who trap and then learn from those trappers where there is 
"open country." 

Now it is in the "open country," that one will find the fur 
pockets which almost unquestionably exist there. It was by cruising 
in "open country" that fur pockets were found along the north shore. 
The "open country" is the trapper's land of opportunity, but Ameri- 
cans intending to trap there, would better study up the game laws 
and before they lay down their line, take out a trapper's $20.00 license ; 
that might save a lot of trouble. However, the game laws are liberally 
construed throughout Canada wilds by certain game protectors. The 
safe side is always best in the matter of licenses and observation of 
the laws. Yet the boys all know that under certain conditions, the 



' A Trapper Pirate. 149 

trapper in the deep wilderness can know no other law than that of 
self-preservation. 

My first story is about a man whose name I cannot give. He 
told me about his fur pocket, and others told me about it. The 
fur pocket was on Slate Islands, which are about ten miles south of 
Cape Victoria. Slate Islands are "private property," and are kept as 
a kind of private preserve. Just what is done with these islands 
by the owners, I did not learn. They are a pile of rocks, covered 
with woods, and contain forty or fifty square miles of land. 

As trespassers were forbidden — as I understand it — to hunt or 
trap there, and as the owners did not trap there, the island shortly 
became alive with fur-bearers. Lynx and marten, especially, were 
very plentiful, and foxes were numerous — beautiful black ones among 
them. Probably the owners never knew that they had a ready-made 
fur farm in their possession, but the trapper of whom I speak shared 
the north shore indignation that people should make a private preserve 
of wild lands. He felt that if he and other people had the square 
deal he would have a chance to trap on that island. On this sub- 
ject we all have our notions and our ideas. If a man develops a fur 
farm he is entitled to his profits, but if the owners of Slate Island 
did not trap, and would not permit any one else to enjoy or use 
the island fur that is another question, to be answered in our own 
hearts. 

The trapper, in summer, was a fisherman. He ran along the 
north shore, and set some gill nets near Slate Island, and anchored 
of a night in the island harbors. Looking ashore, he saw fur animals, 
and he knew that fur must be plentiful where one sees several mink 
along the shore in a late afternoon. He had his doubts, however, 
for he realized that one family of mink would make a lot of show 
in tracks and in animals. If one sees a mink three times and doesn't 
recognize the animal, he may think it is three mink, instead of one. 

Out of curiosity, the fisherman went ashore, on a day that was 
too windy to haul his nets, and took a look through the timber. He 
was a good bare ground reader, and the further he tramped in the 
woods, the more he saw. He spied one fox, and though it was a 



150 A Trip on the" Great Lakes. 

glimpse among the summer leaves, he realized that it must be a silver 
or a black fox. In all directions were fox tracks and signs. 

Then he saw several martens, like squirrels up in the trees. 
Where there was a rock on which the gulls nested, he found that 
mink were feeding on the eggs. The mink caught fish, too, around the 
island. 

There were plenty of otter signs around the island, too, but it is 
against the law to catch otter in Ontario. However, this trapper is a 
sort of a trapper desperado, or pirate. He knew that there were 
markets for otter. He had no particular conscientious scruples. 

The only people on the island were the man and woman who 
kept the island light house. The people who owned the island did 
not come there very often, he knew, and he was very sure that when 
trapping time came around, there was mighty small chance of any 
one wandering out to that island — unless he knew what he was 
about. 

The fisherman knew what he was about. During the summer he 
got things ready for the fall trapping on those islands. He took 
precious good care that no one heard of what he was up to. In 
summer time he was a fisherman, but he looked ahead further than 
his nose. He put out baits along the island runways, and in the 
gaps over the island ridges. He could blaze no trails, of course, 
but an old woodsman needs no blazed trail to keep him on a ridge 
back or on the way up a hollow or valley. 

He picked places where he would set traps, and baited those 
places with fish that he could not sell, and with chunks of meat. 
There is plenty of good meat along the north shore. A pirate trapper 
knows how to get it and how still to keep it. This pirate baited the 
trap line half the summer, and even a marten with lots of good 
berries in its stomach cannot forbear taking a sniff at a piece of 
ripe fish, or a piece of green meat. 

Now trappers all know, of course, that during the summer 
months, most fur-bearers eat a lot of green stuff — grass, leaves, ber- 
ries, nuts, some kinds of seeds, and other things of the vegetable type 
and kind. In the berry season foxes often won't look at a piece of 



A Trapper Pirate. 151 

meat, and let even the juiciest kind of a little young rabbit get away 
unchased. I think that this is one of nature's wisest provisions. If 
foxes and wolves and the weasel tribe did not turn from flesh during 
the breeding season of birds and squirrels and rabbits — of the flesh 
eater's normal prey, the food supply of the flesh eaters would be 
killed off by winter. 

But this trapper, as I said, put out flesh baits which the flesh eaters 
would find and would not forget. When fall came, and the frosts of 
September and the whiffs of snow in early October had quickened 
the appetites of the Slate Island fur bearers, most of those animals 
had had a taste of the baits. A chunk of clean meat makes a mighty 
good dessert for a square meal of blueberries, fishers and foxes and 
their kind feel certain. There were lots of meat and fish desserts eaten 
on Slate Islands that fall. 

When the fur is getting prime along the north shore of Lake 
Superior, the lake is a fearful place for even the hardiest of men. 
The wind sweeps across it, lifting the waves higher and higher, and 
the huge swells roll against the upright rocks of the jagged coast, 
exploding into great clouds of spray, white and ominous to watch as 
the day wanes into the dark murk of a smoke of snow squalls. 

I have little sympathy with thieves, and the best I can say of 
this man who trapped the Slate Islands is that he could not know 
that if those islands were a private fur farm, he was doing wrong 
to raid the islands. But when one sees the chances he took to raid 
the islands, we cannot fail to observe the similarity between his acts 
and the acts of the Buccaneers of the Spanish Main. He raided a 
private preserve, and the Buccaneers raided an equally selfish con- 
tinental preserve. 

When the fishing season was at an end, and the nets had been 
taken up, the rivers were iced over, except in the white water. There 
was snow on the ground. The spray had draped the lake shore 
stones with crystals. In the bays, the ice was forming, and along 
the shores the ice was churning up in the dreadful waves of mush. 

Now was the time when the trapper pirate went afloat in his 
fish boat and drove in the night along the lake shore, venturing the 



152 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

winds and braving the waves, out to the islands which were practically 
in mid-lake. At that time of the year, even the great lake steamers 
hunt along the shore, and ship from lee to lee, making their last 
ventures across the open lakes. At that time of the season insurance 
rates go up — and many a craft is caught and wiped out. Some 
boats disappear, and none survive to tell what became of them. 

Even he did not know what fortune awaited him there on the 
islands. He had kept fishing very late. He had taken only time to 
set out his traps during days when he was storm-bound there at 
the island. He thought that he ought to keep to his fishing as long 
as he could, because fishing paid a good profit. The trapping was 
only a side line — a winter fill-gap. At best, it would not last long 
there on the Slate Islands, unless, perchance, he should be frozen 
in and compelled to wait till he could get across on the ice to the 
shore. 

He did not spend any time considering how he would get ofif the 
islands if he should be frozen in there. He had enough grub to last 
a long time, and he had firearms to kill meat, and traps, snare wire and 
other paraphernalia for getting grub as well as fur. He would not 
starve. He v/as resourceful, too, and had faced disaster in boats, 
with dog teams, on the trap line, and in all kinds of north shore 
conditions. He was no tenderfoot ashore or soft paw afloat. He 
knew his business. 

There was some snow on the ground when he went to the islands 
to stay awhile. He had some traps out, already, which he had set on 
days when storm drove him in under the lee. He had taken some fur 
there, which he had slipped home and into hiding places, where 
none would know that he was on a trapping campaign, A raider, he 
didn't want to take a chance of being raided himself. 

Now he reaped the reward of his planning. He found that 
where he had set out baits, the meat eaters, turning from the sum- 
mer diet of berries and seeds and greenings, had not forgotten the 
meat baits. They visited old meat baits, and fresh baits brought 
them across the trap pans on all sides. 



A Trapper Pirate. 153 

He set snares — the Indian lynx snares, so often described in 
H-T-T — and he baited his traps with rabbits and partridges. He 
had fish scent bait, and anise and his own private "medicine" which 
he keeps secret. The^e he used Hberally. 

He tracked the island from end to end, keeping away from the 
light house only. There was not much danger from the light house 
people; however, he had the theory that "What people don't know 
won't hurt them." He climbed the rough rocks — and they sure are 
rough rocks in that north shore country. He followed the fisher 
runways and discovered the mink and marten crossings. He worked 
all day in the day time, and he came home in the dark. There was 
no time to waste; he must get his catch and get away with it. The 
time would come, he could not tell how soon, when it would be too 
late to get away, when if he did get away, he might never get 
ashore again. 

He trapped the island nearly a month. He stretched his lines in 
all directions. He had out hundreds of traps. It was virgin trap- 
ping ground — it had not been trapped in ten years or so. Of course, 
the animals were not shy, and even the foxes were unafraid. 

The trapper alone knows how many furs he caught — how many 
black and silver foxes, how many mink, marten, fishers, lynx and other 
animals. He does not tell about these things. Even the fur buyers 
could not know how much he caught. To some he sold a few, to 
others he sold a few. From a poor, hand-to-mouth fisherman when 
he went to the island, he came away with a little fortune. He came 
away in time, too, for the "Ice" nor the "Norther" did not catch him. 
He knew enough to quit in time. 

As I said, it is against the law to catch otters in Ontario. This 
trapper was a lawless man, as has been told. One man said that he 
happened to see a pack of otter furs hidden in a little cache, in 
some rocks. He hefted the pack. It would weigh at least sixty 
pounds, he thought. They were beautiful skins, large and prime. Per- 
haps there were twenty-five of them — an otter skin runs more than 
two pounds to the skin. That would be, perhaps, $300 to $500 for ot- 
ters alone, that month. 

9 



154 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

This is just a trapping story — a story pieced together from re- 
marks and admissions and answers I forced out of people who 
thought I might get a good fellow — even if he was an old private 
preserve pirate — into trouble. I could make a first-class guess at 
his name. I know I talked to him. I wish I'd been with him, just 
to have seen that raid on one of the famous north shore fur pockets. 

There are other tales of fur pockets ; if I get things a little mixed 
as to just where the pockets were, the north shore boys will be able 
to set us straight. There are lots of H-T-T and Camp and Trail men 
along the north shore. I found a lot of them there. They know I 
was a walking question mark. I didn't get all the stories, of course, 
but I'm going to let fly those I did get. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
North Shore Fur Pockets — No. 2. 

A Valuable Black Fox. 

THIS is the tale of a black fox that was caught in a North 
Shore Fur Pocket. It was told to me by Game Overseer 
A. W. Nuttall, of Port Arthur. I met him at Port Cold- 
well, and he told me about the fox as we sat on the Foster 
dock watching Bert Spears putter with the engine of 
Nuttall's gasoline boat, The Pirate. 

The last he heard of the black fox pelt of this story, it was sold 
to the Czar of Russia tor the equivalent of £750. Mr. Nuttall is 
pretty well off himself, but he didn't get $3,750 for the skin. I don't 
know how much he did get, but it was something. He hasn't a 
starved look, but I fancy that if he had known the Czar of Russia 
would pay that much for the skin he caught he would have gone to 
Russia with his little bundle of fur under his arm and dickered with 
the Czar himself. He would have made money by it, too, for the 
diflference between £750 and what he got would have paid for a trip 
to, Europe, and then given him something over with which to see the 
sights. 

Now, I've forgotten, if he told, where he caught this fox. It 
was on one of those great islands that are along the North Shore of 
Lake Superior, from Fort William to Port Coldwelk Perhaps he 
didn't tell, on purpose. It doesn't matter, particularly; it was on an 
island, and there were two other black foxes there; some martens, 
fisher, red foxes, cross foxes, mink and other fur bearers. The big 
black was just one of a bunch, and it helped level up the average 
of the winter catch. 

Somewhere along the Nipigon Bay region Nuttall, who was a 
fisherman and trapper in those days, and was not yet a game pro- 

155 



156 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

tector, found an island where he discovered many signs of fur. As 
he was fishing summers, it was an easy matter for him to look this 
island over and get ready for a winter campaign. Those North Shore 
trappers are wise woodsmen. They make ready in the summer and 
early fall for the winter trapping. They blaze trails, build cabins and 
search the land for runways, crossings and all kinds of places they 
may need to know about in the winter. 

Now, the islands along the North Shore are a trapping country 
by themselves. Some are large islands, some small ones, and all of 
them are fur islands, according to their size. There are so many of 
them, and in winter they are so far from other parts of the world 
that sometimes no one traps through them. There are some islands 
of a few square miles which may not have been trapped in twenty 
years. Where the islands are close together, the ice covers the inter- 
vening straits, and one can go from island to island on the ice. Many 
trappers run their lines in the North Shore country with dog teams. 
Sometimes a trapper runs the islands with his dog teams. It, is 
dangerous trapping among those islands. The level of the lake rises 
and falls with the wind, and sometimes there are gaps in the ice under 
the snow. People who get deep in that cold water never come up 
again. 

Captain Nuttall found his fur pocket and when fall came, he put 
out his traps, and when the fur was prime, along about the first of 
November, he set them up and rebaited his cubbies. There is a month 
of good trapping — not much snow, but pretty cold. He had not trapped 
long before he saw that a banner campaign was at hand. He quickened 
his stride over his lines so that he could empty the traps and keep 
them set more. 

Now, here is a little hint in trapping. The North Shore trapper 
is always pestered by "meat hawks" and "meat cats" — any bird that 
eats meat and steps in traps is a meat hawk. Any animal, not a fur 
animal, that eats meat and springs or robs traps is a "meat cat." 
Rabbits, squirrels, deer mice, and the like, are "meat cats." Every 
hour a trap remains with one of those animals in it is an hour of 
useless trap. Where fur is plenty, meat-eaters are plenty — and a 



A Valuable Black Fox. 157 

trapper often finds half or more than half his traps sprung by rabbits 
or partridges. Rabbits will climb a sloping tree just to bother a 
trapper. "Keep the line open," the North Shore trapper says. 

Well, Captain Nuttall swung around his lines on the jump, 
throwing out meat hawks and meat cats, and picking up fur that got 
in before the meat-eaters did. He made quick trips and worked hard. 
His reward was great; he caught twelve or fifteen cross foxes, a lot 
of lynx, a good bunch of fishers, mink and marten, and a small 
silver fox. 

On the first snow he found a fox track that looked like a small 
wolf in size. If it hadn't been for the fox step and the fox shape, 
he would have suspected that it was a wolf, but, of course, he knew 
a fox track — would know it if it was as large as a bear track. This 
fox made such a large track that it startled the trapper, and he was 
at some pains to get acquainted with this fox, which was a dog fox. 

His runway was along the shore of the island, across to a smaller 
island, back to the larger island, and up into the heavy timber. He 
was a proud, high-stepping fox, and got his game by craft. At the 
same time he kept out of traps by craft. Nuttall pretty nearly stopped 
trapping for other foxes to get that fox. He didn't know what kind 
of a fox this was, except that he was a big fellow with no desire of 
putting his paws into steel jaws. 

The big track was a challenge to the trapper. He would go out 
of his way to see what the fox was doing, and to set traps in nice 
likely places for the fox to lose his nerve or forget himself. From 
the beginning the fox and Nuttall had it in for each other; the fox 
liked the baits that Nuttall put in his traps, but he didn't care for 
poison baits. He would rob a trap, but he wouldn't take poison even 
if a trap was at the bait to make it look like a steel trap set. 

Nuttall didn't waste much time on the big fox, except that he 
used a lot of fox traps in that neighborhood. He was paid for the 
trouble by getting other furs, and if the track hadn't been so large 
he would have been contented. Trappers all know that there is 
always some big fisher, or wolf, or mink or otter or fox that refuses 
to get caught till it gets good and ready. Nuttall knew that at the 



158 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

proper time this fox would come home to the fur bale. He kept 
ready to receive it, but did no special stunts beyond trying new 
tricks every time he could think of one. 

One day Nuttall was moving along the shore where the fox was 
in the habit of using. It was a dull day, rather gloomy, and there 
was the threat of a storm in the air. He rounded a point and almost 
rubbed noses with a fox which looked over a low ledge of rock to 
see what was passing by. As Nuttall looked up, the fox looked down, 
and their noses were about thirty inches apart — or something like 
that. Anyhow, Nuttall saw the fox, saw that it was about twice as 
large as an ordinary fox, and that it was black and glossy as hard coal. 

One jump and the fox was in the thick evergreen cover — a 
thousand dollars lost in the wilderness 1 

Captain Nuttall is an old, old trapper and woodsman in experience. 
He isn't old in years, but in trapping he has seen fur as is fur. This 
was the prize fur of all his life! It would be worth more than all 
the rest of the fur of the winter. He might never see it again, but 
as the animal lived on an island, and as it was a Lake Shore animal, 
he had his hopes that he could find him again. 

He began to study fox trapping all over again. He made up his 

mind that if he wanted to get that fox he must begin ,at the beginning 

. and learn how. He boiled traps in all the different kinds of stews 

he could think of, and he used all the different kinds of extra fine 

baits he could remember or discover. 

He did not have time to tell me all the different sets that he 
used, trying to get that fox. He used wolf sets, bear sets, fisher 
sets — all with the traps just as nicely deodorized as he knew how to 
make them. He made one set of four traps, left them for weeks, and 
then threw down a bait — shot it, a rabbit — right there and did not go 
within eight rods of those traps. The fox ate the rabbit, turned two 
traps over, and went his way rejoicing. 

The extra care had its reward, of course. He caught a fine assort- 
ment of cross and red foxes — some of those great big timber reds 
came his way. He got several wolves, too. In that country the 
trappers of the highest order set double spring traps on loose clogs or 



A Valuable Black Fox. 159 

on limber stakes. This is so that the trap will give and spring should 
a large animal get into it. Bears have been caught in wolf and 
even in large fox trap sets. One never knows when a marten set 
will be called upon to entertain a fisher, when a fox trap will have 
to endure a wolf. Nuttall's traps would hold an ordinary wolf. 

All the flush days of the banner catches he was making in that 
island fur pocket were as wormwood and gall to Nuttall, as long as 
that black fox giant was at large. He would dream about him, and 
he would find himself thinking about him when he was on the other 
end of his trap line. He had no peace of mind thinking about that 
fox with a thousand dollars in his fur coat; he suspected that at a 
thousand dollars that fox would be a mighty cheap fox, but he wasn't 
certain. 

Nuttall knows a thing or two about poisons. He knows how to 
make a wolf think two drops of death are fish and venison. I say 
two drops advisedly, for he uses fluid poison, sealed in tallow — the 
dangerous and difficult prussic acid is in his service when he gets 
right after anything. Ordinary trappers don't want to monkey with 
this stuff, for it will poison a trapper with just as much bad will as it 
poisons a wolf or a fox. The smell of it will kill a man; a drop of 
it on a wolf's tongue knocks the wolf down right there. But there 
are kinds and kinds of prussic acid; some is strong and some is weak; 
some is effective and some isn't. There are acids of weak percentages 
and strong percentages. Two ounces of the pure stuff will kill a 
whale ninety feet long in two minutes ; one whiff of the stuff will kill 
a man in three seconds or so. The black fox didn't care for any 
prussic acid, not even in mutton tallow or in cubes of fish. He 
wouldn't have anything to do with strychnine, either. 

He was just one great big wise fox and he knew better than to 
be nervous or worried. He would go about his business all around 
that part of the island, and yet, when he came to suspicious places — 
and Nuttall laid great temptations and covered up all the suspicions 
he could all over that part of the land — the fox just wouldn't take 
any fox bait he had a mind to put out. 



160 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

Weeks passed and the fox side-stepped every trap that Nuttall 
put out. He never did get into a trap that Nuttall set for him. He 
seemed to know a fox trap by instinct, ty training, by intuition, by 
observation — by all the ways that a fox could possibly know a fox trap. 

Once in a while a trapper gets out of bait, and he has to set some 
snares and traps to catch rabbits. Nuttall needed some rabbits, 
and there was a long, thick swamp on the island in which he put out 
some brass wire snares, swinging them from long, limber switches. 
The rabbits running along the runways would plump their heads 
through the snares and swing themselves up. 

The swamp was only a little ways from Nuttall's camp, and he 
used to throw out some cabbage leaves, turnip parings and other 
vegetables. He had some apples in the root cellar, and he took the 
skins and cores of some of these and baited noose traps with them. 
Trapping rabbits saved cartridges and saved a lot of hunting some- 
times. 

One morning when Nuttall had just come from his line and had 
decided to lay over a day, he went out to look over his rabbit snares, 
just for exercise. He didn't need any rabbits, exactly, but he thought 
he would go out and look them over. 

He found two or three rabbits and hung them up in trees and 
reset the snares. He took down a partridge that looked all right, 
having his little bait rifle with him. He ambled around through the 
woods for an hour or two and then came to his string of apple-bait 
snares. Rabbits are very fond of apples. There was a rabbit in every 
apple-baited snare, except the last. 

The great black fox, worth $3,750 to the Czar of Russia, had had 
an appetite for apples, too, and there he swung on his hind legs, with 
his head in a tiny brass wire noose. 
"After all the pains I'd took with him, too !" Nuttall remarked. 



CHAPTER XV. 
North Shore Fur Pockets — No. 3. 

Twelve Silver Foxes. 

THIS is the story of a man who caught twelve or seven silver 
foxes in one Winter on one island. The trapping land is 
Michipicoten Island, and it lies about sixty miles from The 
Soo, and it belongs to Canada, It is not a fur pocket any 
longer, however. The track of only one fox was seen 
there last Winter, and one lynx was seen there. 

It is a strange thing, how fur pockets are missed by trappers. 
There is no stranger story of a fur pocket than this one of Michipi- 
coten Island. Here was a little island, where fishermen had fishing 
stations, where the government had a lighthouse, where trappers came 
during the Summer months to work on the fish tugs. A steamer 
made regular calls there; in fact two steamers came there, besides 
fish tugs, and there was a good deal of rabbit and partridge hunting 
done on the island. A good wagon road ran several miles back up 
in the timber, and it would seem as though any one must have seen 
where the foxes and the lynx and the other fur animals traveled and 
led. 

I s-uppose the trappers knew there was fur there. They could not 
have helped knowing it; those North Shore trappers see fur signs 
where you and I of the little clearings and the little woods would not 
see sign. They read the woods. Yet they did not see the signs of 
the twelve silver foxes (in one place my notes say seven). 

There is a reasonable explanation of the thing, of course. The 
island would not make more than a small loop on a North Shore 
trapper's line — excepting the line of some such man as Billy Newman, 
who sets few traps, but tends them like a cat tends her kittens. No 

161 



162 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

one thought there was enough fur there on Michipicoten Island to 
bother with. 

Yet there it was, in sight of the old Hudson Bay Post at Michipi- 
coten — now abandoned, because it is no longer a sufficient fur country, 
and because most of the Indians are gone, and the trappers have 
"plenty of markets in other directions. 

I am rather doubtful as to the details of the discovery of this 
fur pocket. I may possibly be mistaken as to the number of foxes 
the open-eyed trapper caught. I give my facts as I find them in my 
note book. There may be some little variations, but in the main what 
I say is as I understood it. 

Lewis Carmash was a fisherman at Michipicoten Island. He had 
a rabbit tooth, and he had to feed that tooth on rabbit meat, or 
suffer a good deal of hunger. He was an original genius so far as I 
could learn. Those North Shore fishermen have ways that awaken 
one's ideas. 

Carmash hung a piece of old gill net between two trees, between 
which ran a rabbit runway, and draped the netting down so that it was 
like a curtain hanging three layers deep over the runway. The net 
was light linen threads, and the meshes were about five inches in size. 
Carmash expected to catch rabbits in the gill nets, and he did get 
enough to satisfy his appetite for them. Also, he caught a medium 
sized silver gray fox, worth a hundred dollars or so. 

One man, and perhaps only one man, grasped the significance of 
that catch. Billy Richardson, who has lived along the North Shore 
between Michipicoten and Port Huron, happened to be fishing from 
the island. He lived for a time on Richardson's Harbor, and gave 
that fine bay his name. No other man, with the possible exception of 
Capt. McEneny at Otter Island Light, has so much knowledge of the 
shore. He is trapper, boat builder, lighthouse keeper (Little Gros 
Cap), fisherman and hunter. 

Richardson divined that if there was one silver gray there there 
must be others there. At least, one young silver gray fox meant old 
foxes, and if there were very many foxes, very many lynx, very many 
mink, very many marten and so on, there would be a good enough 



Twelve Silver Foxes. 1G3 

catch to invite a Winter's attention. Billy Richardson and his w^ife, 
a fine woman who scorns to deny that she is a half-breed Indian, 
would not for anything desert that wild and wonderful land where 
they have lived these many years. They would be only too glad to 
spend a Winter on a gull rock, if they took a notion to. 

Without saying much about it, they settled down on Michipicoten 
Island for the Winter. Richardson went home to Michipicoten, 
where he. has a fine home, and brought away his Winter outfit — camp 
supplies, clothes, traps, everything that he would need in the Winter. 
It is worth saying 'that a proper Winter outfit, not counting a boat, 
costs upwards of $600. When one is on the North Shore of Lake 
Superior, camped down for the Winter where the ice lies between the 
islands and the shores, where the storms rage, and where one has no 
other resident within fifty miles, it is necessary to have a complete 
outfit, and anything forgotten may mean suffering and even death. 
Men die back there in those wilds and no one finds them in their un- 
known camps. 

When the end of the Fall fishing was at hand, there was a scat- 
tering of the Michipicoten Island people. I think that the island was 
entirely deserted, except by the Richardsons that Winter. At least, 
they were the only trappers there, and the first trappers there in many 
years. Mrs. Richardson is a trapper and hunter herself — most of the 
North Shore women are users of rifles and shotguns, and they run 
their own lines near the camps. 

With the fishing out of the way, and the fur prime, Billy Richard- 
son was ready to follow up his trapping. An old North Shore trapper 
is certain to know pretty near where he is going to set his traps 
before he starts out with his traps. He will have the very places to 
set his traps picked out, and frequently, when he is a fox trapper, he 
will have the traps already placed, ready for baiting later. Sometimes 
he baits or scents a set, and then puts in his traps. He has as many 
tricks as the next man. 

Billy Richar-dson boils his traps in maple wood chips. That gives 
them the odor of maple syrup, which is not a bad scent for foxes. 
Of course, for each fox one must devise and scheme and puzzle out 



164 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

the best way to get him. Richardson does these things. No tender- 
foot going to Michipicoten Island would have caught those silver 
grays which were racing the runways and nipping the rabbits in the 
small of the back. If they were there now, forty tenderfeet could 
not get them. 

They called for all of Billy Richardson's skill, and he has all the 
skill that any North Shore trapper has. He needed it all. All the 
experience that he had had trapping was put into the scales against 
those foxes, old and yearlings. Of course, he got them. He cleaned 
up the foxes on the island. Only one was known to be there last 
Winter. That one probably came across from the mainland, for Lake 
Superior froze over last Winter. 

There were a lot of minks, and a good number of lynx and other 
wild animals. There were a lot of red foxes and several cros-s foxes. 
One doesn't know whether the fox he is after is a red or a sampson 
or a black, unless a glimpse is had of it. On Michipicoten Island, 
where the timber is thick, as on all the North Shore, except in the 
fire barrens, one sees few fur bearers. The tracks in snow, mud and 
sand betray them. 

Richardson and his wife caught a lot of fur that Winter. They 
never had shorter lines or more fun trapping than on Michipicoten 
Island. They did not have to sleep out in the little shanties; they 
lived in a comfortable home with everything snug and cozy. They 
went out every fair day and gathered in a lynx, a mink or two, a fox 
or a fisher, and that was like play-trapping. They had to use great skill 
and care, of course, but compared to the long march over the ordinary 
North Shore trap line, these island lines were play, were little exer- 
cise walks. It was like those little lines of muskrat traps that boys set 
around on little ponds and by creeks. Had they been on a honeymoon 
Billy Richardson and his wife could not have enjoyed life more than 
they did there. 

All the time they were there they could not help but be amazed 
that so much fur, so many pelts, should have been unobserved by 
the keen eyes of other trappers. But Richardson himself had missed 
those furs. He knew Michipicoten Island, had been there scores of 



Twelve Silver Foxes. 165 

times in the fifteen or sixteen years he had traveled and trapped the 
North Shore. It v^as incredible that so many furs should have roamed 
there, unmolested. When they talked it over, they knew the fur had 
been seen. The mink played around the fish docks and seized the fish 
refuse thrown out to them, and they ran under the fish docks and 
stuck up their heads through the floor like rats. 

Habit had a good deal to do with the failure to see the fur 
pocket that was on Michipicoten. There is a time when a place is "all 
trapped out." No one can catch fur there, and every one stops trap- 
ping. Everyone says, "Trapping is no good around here." They keep 
saying it, year after year. Even good trappers, remembering their ill 
success, think there is no trapping. They think it is hopeless to try to 
find any fur tracks, so they lose the habit of looking for fur. 

After a time, once in a while, they see a mink track, a skunk 
track, or any kind of a track. They say to themselves, "Oh, well, it 
just happened so!" If they see several tracks, why, then, "Oh, well, 
it's just one that run around a lot." 

That was what happened to Michipicoten Island. No doubt, some 
time or other, the island was "cleaned out," just as Billy Richardson 
cleaned it out. There was one good big season of trapping on it. 
Then in five or ten years, there would be another season. In ten or 
fifteen years, another good catch could be had. So it goes with the 
"fur pocket islands" all along the North Shore. 

About every so often somebody finds that an island has not been 
trapped, and he finds that fur is thick there. With that, he makes a 
great haul of fur. Sometimes, in the course of years, he finds another 
fur pocket in some other place. These great years put some North 
Shore men on their feet, financially. The North Shore trappers arc 
a steady, hard-working set of men. They are on the look-out for fur 
pockets all the while, and yet they miss some that are right under 
their noses. 

I do not know how much fur Billy Richardson caught that Winter 
on Michipicoten Island, He made large wages any hew, and had a good 
time. He would have made good wages had there been no silver gray 
foxes, for the lynx and mink would have paid the way that Winter. 



166 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

I may say that the ordinary North Shore fur catch of business- 
Hke and thorough-going trappers runs from $700 to $1,000, but dubs 
can make $300 there on an outlay of $600, just as elsewhere. Indeed, 
some of the best trappers, in Winters of hard luck, can make no profit 
at all, but go in the hole. 

In another article I shall describe a fur pocket, and tell some 
things about it. The fur pocket is there now— but it is not a place 
that one man in a thousand should go to — not one trapper in a thou- 
sand has any business there. Trappers haven't lost any fur in that 
country, and they needn't think they have; and yet on the face of it, 
that fur pocket is the greatest temptation I know of in the trapping 
line. It is one of the traps that Nature sets to catch trappers in. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
North Shore Fur Pockets— No. 4. 

Eleven Mink at Once. 

FOR a thousand years, perhaps for ten thousand years, men 
have hunted Fur Pockets. Much of the romance of the 
world is found in this prospecting for fur. Those old time 
French Courier du Bois wanderers sought fur pockets, and 
they found the interior of a great continent; wars were 
fought over the continent because it was a fur pocket, the home of 
the beaver, and Canada puts the effigy of a beaver on its lighthouses, 
and the most beautiful stamps ever printed in Canada bore the picture 
of a beaver. 

Now, Canada is the land of fur pockets. We may hope that the 
time will never come when the hardy and experienced trapper cannot 
find fur in that great wilderness north of the Great Lakes. Yet the 
search for fur pockets means hardship, weariness and danger, if one 
would venture into the deeper recesses of the Land of Fur. There 
are little fur pockets which are protected by the blindness of men to 
the foot prints of mink and muskrats. Just the other day, my brother 
told me of seeing a little marsh beside a trolley track between two 
great cities, where there were scores of muskrat houses, hundreds of 
feeding places and countless runways and swimways through the reeds 
and cat-tails and grasses. On all sides are wealthy farmSj and the 
sons of the soil have forgotten the art of trapping, and do not know 
the little wild fur farm in the back lot. 

Now I have to tell a little about a Great Fur Pocket. Martin 
Hunter probably knows its story far better than I do ; perhaps a score 
of old trappers know, it better than I could ever know it, though I 
should trap across it for winters. 

167 



168 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

In Martin Hunter's H-T-T book, Canadian Wilds, on page 42, he 
tells of accompanying men who carried winter dispatches between Pic 
River, where the Canadian Pacific railway now strikes the north 
shore of Lake Superior, and Michipicoten, which is on the lake, on 
the way to The Soo. The trail is 120 miles long, and about midway 
along this trail, toward the west, is the fur pocket I promised in No. 3 
of this series to describe. 

I am just a little bit afraid of Martin Hunter and those other 
North Country sharps, and I am rather doubtful about putting before 
their eyes this article lest they find much fault with its details and its 
generalities. However, if they find fault I shall retort that we waited 
so long for them to speak that it was time somebody told about it. 

This fur pocket is a terrible land. I say that to start with, be- 
cause I don't want any one to head for it, seeking their everlasting 
fortunes on my say-so. It is a temptation; but let me say that there 
are graves all along the west side of that fur pocket, along the lake 
shore. I saw a number of them, with little picket fences around the 
six-by-two bit of ground in which lies all that remains of men and 
women who endured that bleak shore — and then died. 

There is a grave at Pukaso, for instance. There are forgotten 
graves there, I am sure. There are graves that were never marked by 
the little fences. There is one grave, at least, that of old man Wilson, 
30 miles back in the fur pocket, where a trapper lies under the ruins 
of his fallen wigwam. Doubtless, there are bones of men there, which 
never had a grave over them. Let the bitterness of that land sink 
deep in the hearts of every man who would face its rigors and endure 
its miseries, and tempt its unkind gods, for sake of the fur that lives 
among the glacier worn hills of stone and in the gullies of white 
water rage. 

I do not know how large the fur pocket is. It may be smaller 
this year than it was last, or it may be larger this year than last. I 
made some figures on this subject — some measurements from informa- 
tion that I got, and it appears that there are 1,600 to 2,000 square 
miles of territory there which was not trapped last winter. 



Eleven Mink at Once. 169 

One corner of this territory is — or was — somewhere near Point 
Isacor, toward Michipicoten, and the other lake shore corner is some- 
where south of Pic River, or Port Huron, and any one who will get a 
chart of Lake Superior and measure from the scale of miles will find 
that there are from forty to fifty miles of lake shore where there was 
no trapping last winter, except by two tenderfeet who almost starved 
to death, and would perhaps have died if they had not found left-over 
supplies in the lighthouse at Otter Island. 

Now, this fur pocket extends back from the Lake Shore to almost 
if not quite to the Old Hudson Bay trail, which Mr. Hunter tells 
about in that most interesting of trapper narratives, Canadian Wilds. 
He does not tell of it as a fur pocket, and in fact tells how he went 
over the trail and found no game to shoot with his rifle, I fancy that 
the fur pocket has developed since he was on that trail. 

Now, a fur pocket will start up in a very few years. One or two 
years on a muskrat marsh, with a fair breeding stock, will make a 
fur pocket. Then if mink are left alone four years, they make a fur 
pocket without outside assistance. Otter are rather slower, beaver are 
very fast breeders, bears very slow, fisher quite fast, marten rapid 
sometimes, and sometimes they never seem to increase, however little 
molested. This country that I am describing has this year, I think, 
two occupants. 

One of these is a prospector named Ross Hamilton from The Soo, 
who has a camp at Pukaso, from which he may be running a line of 
traps this winter. William Newman is there somewhere, I think at 
Old Pilot Harbor, or perhaps a little further north. Then there are 
two men whose location is above Point Isacor, and whose intentions 
are doubtful, but they are probably trappers. Under Point Isacor, 
in the bay, there is the camp of Madji Nugent, wife and daughter, 
trappers. 

This leaves about thirty or forty miles of the shore without any 
one, except the Pukaso prospector, who almost surely will run a short 
line — say fifteen or twenty miles. He saw eleven mink at once on 
Otter Cove, and could hardly resist such a temptation as that. 

Certainly, a dozen or fifteen trappers could not trap that country 

10 



170 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

clean in five years. A line run from any of ten or twelve bays and 
coves, and attended as a business proposition, could hardly fail to 
reward the hardy trapper with wages. 

He must know the North Country, however. He must know 
wolves, not only as a trapping proposition, but as a deadly menace 
for him should he meet a hungry pack. Game Protector A. W. Nuttall 
told me that he saw the tracks of a hundred wolves on one little sand 
bar near Swallow River. 

The lake shore along there is a long mass of perpendicular rocks, 
with bays and coves due to the contour of the land. These coves offer 
excellent harbors for boats, but as they freeze over solid, the boats 
must be hauled out during the winter. The land is grown to small 
sized, close standing spruce, balsam and some hardwoods. There are 
two sugar bushes, or maple trees, a few miles back from the lake shore, 
known to the Indians, and visited by them in the spring of the year, 
on occasion. 

The swamps are alive with rabbits, which furnish an ample food 
supply for the foxes, fishers, martens, and other furbearers, except 
that once in a while, the rabbits are afflicted by some intestinal dis- 
ease, and die off, leaving only porcupines — quillpigs — for food. Then 
there are the grouse, or partridges. These birds are in great abund- 
ance. Although the timber is very thick, there is no difficulty in killing 
as many of these birds as one wants, except that they, too, are sub- 
ject to fits of scarcity. A trapper getting in there with a short supply 
of grub might very well find his food from the wild supply, unless 
he found a time of epidemic, in which case he might starve. 

. Now, the streams and lakes are alive with trout — but one must 
know how to catch them. One must have an auger, with a two-inch 
bit, and this will bore a hole down through the four or five feet of 
ice on the lakes over the sandbars on which the fish lie in the lakes 
in winter, and then catch them. The location of the fish beds must 
be ascertained in the fall before the freeze up. 

It is a terribly hard country to travel in, if there are no trails 
to follow. The trapper must cut his trails through before the snow 
comes, and he must build his line shanties, set up his trap cubbies, 



Eleven Mink at Once. 171 

prepare his scent baits, and he should cut great piles of fire wood for 
each shanty or wigwam. He should have plenty of kindlings stored 
away, too. 

One thing that shows the kind of a country it is is the list of sup- 
plies that are regarded as necessary. One cannot run out to the store 
when the baking powder is short, or when the squirrels eat up all the 
split peas and beans. One must take enough for seven months, and 
be on the line by September 1, for the trail cutting and camp building. 
Of course, an old trapper might make a go, if he went in in October, 
and hustled through, but the older the trapper, the earlier he would be 
in going to the scene. 

Maps cannot be had of the interior of that country. There is one 
issued by the Department of the Interior of Canada, covering the 
Nipigon and reaching down to the Otter Island Light, but it has only 
the faintest indications of the course of two or three streams. The 
coast has not even been sounded and there have been no surveys — it 
is primitive wilderness, calling for pioneer hardihood and resource- 
fulness. 

The mountains rise to more than 2,000 feet above the lake level, 
I think, and there are thousands of precipices from a few feet to hun- 
dreds of feet high. I was hours, in one little corner, making my way 
a few hundred yards. The picking of the course for the trails requires 
consummate woodcraft. 

However, when the difficulties are surmounted, when the trails are 
blazed, the traps laid down and baited — it is a fur pocket! It is a 
wonderful pocket. It costs $600 for the outfit, not including a boat, 
but there is fur. An occasional silver and black fox, hundreds of 
mink, marten, fishers, lynx, cross and red foxes, wolves, muskrats 
are there. 

One hears many stories about the Wilsons on that North Shore. 
I suppose some are made up, and yet those Wilsons, father and son, 
showed the way into .that fur pocket. 

Time was when the Indians trapped that country, and it was not 
a fur pocket. Then the Indians died and weakened, and as Martin 
Hunter tells, they ceased to be trappers. All through that North 



172 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

Shore country there are old Indian trapping grounds now abandoned 
because the Indians are weak and old and no account. The Indian 
has lost his skill and his endurance there. This fur pocket is the old 
trapping ground of a man who died three or four years ago, who had 
his camp at Pukaso. That Indian had not trapped for years. Then 
the Wilsons came and ran two three hundred miles of trap lines in 
loops and main lines, and got in five winters no one knows how many 
furs — perhaps $10,000 worth, perhaps $25,000 worth. I do not know. 
They took out $900 worth one early December, I was told. 

They could not trap all that fur pocket, no two men could do it. 
The trappers there have gasolene boats or sail boats. Gasolene costs 
40 cents a gallon. Billy Newman traps a line ten or fifteen miles 
long, and specializes on wolves. He says that $500 is his winter's 
work. He does not have the strength to ram his line into the heart 
of the land. Other trappei:s of that region turn their backs on it. It 
is too remote, too hard for them. Many of the best trappers cling to 
their own lines, year after year, preferring their old well-opened trails 
to the new and unknown. 

Disaster has overtaken the trappers of that land time and again. 
V/illiam Richardson of Michipicoten, is the only one whom I know 
who did not suffer there. He had his camp on Richardson's harbor, 
and he trapped back into the wilderness several winters. He carried 
his supplies up in a sailboat, and he left the place, several years ago, 
preferring Michipicoten to the lonely hardships of the wild frozen land. 
Bill Newman, as I have said, is somewhere up there now — a man who 
has been sick for several years. I hate to think of what he may 
undergo. Dave Catosson has a cabin on the lake shore under the lee 
of some gull rocks above Old Pilot Harbor — but he would not stay 
there over winter. Old Madj Nugent swings a circle of traps out from 
the mouth of Dog River as far as Point Isacor, which is as far as 
he cares to go. 

I think there is a line of traps reaching down from Pic River 
Mission (Port Huron), but it probably comes no farther than Oiseau 
Bay. From Oiseau Bay to Pukaso is a land with no trapper, and on 



Eleven Mink at Once. 173 

Otter Bay, six or eight miles from Otter Island Light, is the beach 
where Ross Hamilton saw eleven mink at once. 

I took a look at the sand myself, and at the woods and along 
shore. I saw a great red fox in broad day at one place, and mink 
tracks about everywhere, and moose and caribou sign. There was 
lots of signs — very tempting is that Fur Pocket. I do not know of any 
place where Nature has more cleverly baited its trap to lure trappers 
into the jaws of a terrible winter and through the bitterness of a 
hungry campaign. 

That is what this great fur pocket is — a Trap, a man trap. There 
are sly wolf-like trappers who know a trap, and can keep out of the 
jaws while lifting the bait. They may or may not consider this 
North Shore, or rather Northeast Shore of Lake Superior. 

After all, perhaps this is just the imagination of men who talked 
to me up there — except that I saw the tracks there along the shore. 
One animal makes a lot of tracks. Then, again, with every one telling 
such stories about this fur pocket, it may be that there are a dozen 
trap lines across the land this winter. I do not know. Billy Richard- 
son, at Michipicoten, Ontario, might know. So might N. W. Foster at 
Port Coldwell, Ontario. 

As I said, somebody knows a lot more about that land than I do 
— let them speak ! Personally, if I were looking for fur pockets to 
trap, I would hunt up that muskrat marsh between Utica and Syra- 
cuse, N. Y., before I went to the Otter Island hinterland. I would 
go to St. Ignace Island south of Nipigon Bay, or Fluor Island, or 
Magnet Point before I went to that shore between Port Coldwell and 
Michipicoten. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
Great Lakes Small Boats. 

THE Great Lakes are the hunting and fishing and trapping 
grounds of thousands of outdoor people. I saw I don't 
know how many kinds of craft along the string of lakes 
from the St. Lawrence to Fort William. There were birch 
bark canoes and flying machines, the canoes being on the 
north shore of Lake Superior and the flying machines on St. Clair 
Lake. They say that there are some sports who hunt ducks from 
flying machines, but it costs so much to run them and to buy them 
that it doesn't seem much like a poor man's outfit. 

There are many canoes — beautiful little crafts — used along the 
Canadian shores. On the American side there were mostly skiffs in 
similar waters. I could not at first figure out why this should be, unless 
it was just the habit or the fancy. I think, though, that why the 
canoes are so popular in Canada on the lake shore is because they are 
so pretty to look at and they are so attractive to handle, requiring skill 
and resourcefulness. 

But there is another reason why canoes are Canada's favorite 
craft. No skiff that was ever built could rival the canoe in its utility 
in the small streams of Canada. The North Shore streams call for 
the canoe, and the skiff has little place there in the swift waters pour- 
ing down out of the glacier-worn mountains along the north side. 

The canoe was the more useful to the Canadians; the skiff the 
more useful to the Americans. That explains the utilitarian motive 
for the different kinds of craft found on the northern and the southern 
side of the lakes. If we travel in far places, it is certain that in those 
far places we shall find outfits corresponding to the needs of the 
community. We may think in our own minds that something else 
would be better but there is a reason for the local customs. 

174 



Great Lakes Small Boats. 175 

Now, the canoe is a better boat for navigating the swift streams 
of Canada. It is lighter to carry around the rapids and falls. It is 
easier to handle in the rushing waters where one need not land — if 
he is skillful enough to keep right side up ! Always, in considering the 
Canadian trips, one must give the canoe first place in the possible 
choice of a boat; it should be displaced only because of superior merits 
for the purpose for which a craft is to be used. 

The canoe is a romantic craft. With it is associated all the fine 
developments of the old traveling kinds; the Indians were canoe men, 
and the traditions echo' with the wild adventures of the first woods 
runners, the Frenchmen, Courier de Bois, when they dipped their 
paddles and headed away across the vast divides. The best boat for 
the hardest part of the journey is the rule in picking a craft for a 
journey. For part of their journeys the French woods runners would 
have found a sail boat better than a canoe — but as they were obliged 
to go in a boat in which they could go up stream, which they could 
carry over the divide, in which they could trip down stream as well as 
go out into the wide lakes, naturally they went in canoes. The 
canoe was the only boat that would make the whole journey, for they 
could not make carries with skiffs. 

Very wonderful, very beautiful, is the canoe in its own country. 
No picture scene that I saw was quite so fine as the old Indian at 
Dog River, on Lake Superior, putting the finishing touches on a nine- 
feet long canoe built of birch bark. He worked with the fond care 
and balanced effort of a man who loves his work. He had a big lake 
boat, and a skiff or two, but this was his real boat; the one in which 
he would go with his family up into the wilderness, killing game 
and catching fur and fish. Imagine a white man taking his wife and 
grown daughter and their camping outfit in a boat nine feet long! 
That was Madgi Nugent's intention. 

Thus, if one intends to trip up the streams, and make the little 
lakes which are in thousands through that country, the canoe is the 
boat. Perhaps there is no other craft that has so much genuine sport 
in it as the canoe,, the light, graceful, efficient, wonderful canoe. A 
little canoe will carry five hundred pounds, and one of the great fur 



176 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Great Lakes Small Boats. 177 

trade canoes would carry perhaps as much as two tons of men and 
their packs. No other craft is of quite such a woodcraft type as the 
canoe. 

The canoe is the pleasure craft of thousands along the north shore 
of the lakes, people who do not go anywhere but on the lake shore. I 
saw scores of these crafts with young people in them off the pleasure 
resorts of the North Shore. On the Bay of Quinte, at Belleville, 
Trenton and the various little villages, all the young folks know how 
to paddle their own canoes, and they ride far to picnics in them. 

Caught in a storm on the little lakes, bays and along the shore, 
many a merry-maker has lost his life, however, because the canoe is 
not a wide water boat; it was never meant for open waters. It was 
invented and developed for stream travel, and it has no rival in the 
always dangerous but fascinating work of running rapids — driving 
through the white water. 

The largest canoes now on the Great Lakes are, I think, those 
used by the Indians in running the Sault Rapids, at Sault Ste. Marie, 
at the foot of Lake Superior. They are about twenty feet long, very 
wide and with very high sides — a beautiful craft. I met one party of 
canoe cruisers sailing down the Bay of Quinte, two and their duffle in 
a craft about sixteen feet long, deep laden and with a sail up. 

For hand-power travel on the Great Lakes, the skiff is the thing. 
It cannot rival the canoe in grace, lightness, or in beauty, but it has 
strength, stability and room which the canoe cannot have, length for 
length. I have traveled more than two thousand miles in the open 
skiff, with my camping outfit, rowing, floating and paddling. One was 
a brute, in which I came down the Holston and Tennessee Rivers, but 
it was better than a canoe would have been. Had it been the right 
kind of a skiff, it would have been a perfect class of boat for the 
purpose. There were no carries and no rapids demanding the peculiar 
qualities of a canoe. 

For straight lake service, the skiff is always most in demand. The 
survival of the skiff in such colonies as those at St. Claire Flats, at 
St. Lawrence River and at all the south side summer resorts shows 
that the skiff is the best of hand-power boats. It has even survived 



178 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Great Lakes Small Boats. 179 

the motor, for the rod and line fishermen's boats with motors in them 
are nearly all skiffs, or gas engine boats developed from skiff lines. 

The rowboat should be fitted to the service for which it is de- 
sired, and on the Great Lakes the adapting of boats to the needs has 
brought about a good many different models and designs. The net 
fisherman has a heavy, sharp-bowed, flare-sided, square stern "punt," 
eighteen or twenty feet wide, with a flat bottom. It rides the wave; 
like a duck, pulls easy, considering the size and weight, and he v-an 
haul his net up over the side of it without upsetting it; indeed, he put? 
both feet on the side and hoists away to get up his net. This skiff 
costs around $30.00. 

At the other extreme are the summer resort skiffs, one of which 
it was said cost $140, and probably if one went right out to see how 
much could be put into a skiff, three or four hundred dollars could be 
spent on an 18-foot rowboat. For from $25.00 to $60.00 one should get 
a rowboat sixteen feet to eighteen feet long, as seaworthy as it could 
be made and fit for going anywhere along the shores of the great lakes. 

I like the skiff that is sharp at both ends, because it rides well, 
rows well and carries well. It is less apt to take waves over the stern 
and a little bow and< stern deck saves a lot of bailing in a sea, as the 
wave breaking over the stern does not come down solid as it does in a 
square stern, deckless boat. 

The boat sharp at both ends is easier to launch in the surf, too, 
stern first — as most beached boats have to be launched. I recognized 
this when I was caught on a windward shore and had to go afloat in 
the breaking waves. The waves were cut up by a large stone out 
from where I was beached, and backing out stern first I caught some 
water even with the sharp stern. On the Mississippi, twice, my 
square stern boat was swamped because the stern did not rise, and 
the wave broke over on the stern seat, starting the boat's filling. Most 
of the pleasure boats that I saw were sharp at both ends, since in 
practice it has been found that on wide waters they stand up somewhat 
better. One particular advantage they have, if the seats are arranged 
right is the rowing both ways, using either end for the bow. This is 
of tremendous advantage in a short, choppy sea, when one would have 



180 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Great Lakes Small Boats. 181 

to turn around and perhaps swamp before getting clear around, if 
the stern was square. 

Of course, a well-made skifif is not apt to upset. It should have 
its bottom wide and almost flat. It should have high sides, and its 
seats should be high enough to have the elbows of the oarsman level 
with the top of the gunwale, at least— a little higher, perhaps. The 
stern seat should be low, and the load should be on the bottom — light 
stuff on top of the heavy. The load should be so placed that the bow 
will rise higher than the stern, at least two inches in a 16-foot boat, 
with all on board. A boat down by the head is all right for sailing, 
however, and whoever travels in a skiff or other kind of a craft, for 
that matter, should learn how to trim ship, fore and aft and across. 

For mere traveling one does not need a heavy boat. There is little 
likelihood of staving a boat if ordinary precautions are taken. Neither 
is there great danger of swamping. The fact that millions of dollars' 
worth of furs were carried down the Great Lakes in canoes shows that 
the lakes are fit for small boat navigation — if one is not reckless. I 
suppose that a man could go from Duluth to Cape Vincent, the whole 
length of the Great Lakes in a canoe twenty-four inches wide, and ten 
feet long — but he would have to pick his weather. The same journey 
could be made by a man in a 16-foot skiff, 42 inches wide and 15 inches 
deep without a bit of danger, if he knows enough to go ashore when 
the wind blows or the clouds roll up black. 

Boys of ten or twelve years on the Great Lakes pull around with 
their parents riding the waves in punts and skiff's under circumstances 
that would make one unused to the water hold his breath with fear. 
For instance, there was a sport wanted a brook trout for supper. Two 
youths went in their skiff against a gale of wind and rolling waves 
right out to a gill net, pulled the net and came back in again with 
the trout. They kept their bow to the waves; less able seamen would 
have swamped. 

Canada bleeds its people by means of a high tariff. The rail- 
roads bleed the country by excessive freight rates By putting on low 
tariff and low freights, thousands of square miles would be developed 
in a very short time. There are thousands of motor boats on the 



1^2 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

American side of the lakes, while on the North Shore there are hardly 
any. Gasoline, selling on the south shore for 18 or 20 cents a gallon, 
costs 40 cents or more on the North Shore. Kerosene costs 40 cents 
on the North Shore in some places. 

For this reason there is little, motor boating in Canadian waters 
except by American boats — and American motor boaters are up against 
it in the effort to get gasohne or lubricants or other supplies. The 
Canadian fishermen are still using sailing boats in their work, simply 
because their government is permitted by Canadians to keep conditions 
as they are. Trappers, hunters, fishermen, prospectors, woodsmen, 
traders — furbuyers— loggers, small supply and passenger boats would 
all use oil in their craft if the Canadian government were not so short- 
sighted in the matter of prices charged for fuel and lubricants. 

The loss to Canada's prosperity since the gasoline boat came into 
service through the failure of the government there to open up their 
waters to this kind of craft by removing onerous burdens must amount 
to many million dollars. In the fishing, only a few men have motor 
boats; they cost too much to buy and to run. Fishermen use sail- 
boats where the American fishermen use motorboats. Canadians are 
using little steam boats which might better give way to oil burners. 
The artificial barriers imposed by politics has retarded many of the 
Canadian industries and deprived thousands of profits they should 
have had in this one matter of motor boats. 

Yet, in spite of the barriers imposed the motor boat is coming to 
the top in the Great Lake outdoor boat service. Trappers follow the 
shores on both sides of the lakes, going to and from their trapping 
country in motor boats. On the North Shore economical motor boat- 
ing would open up hundreds of miles of country which is now hardly 
touched owing to the fact that sailboats of a size for one man service 
or two man service cannot safely be used. 

For mere running around, the skiff is all right; it is a good 
pleasure boat, and I would rather have a skiff with a little sail than 
almost any other type of boat — far more than a large sailboat cruiser, 
but for right down lake service, there is nothing to compare to the 
motor boat, and in the next chapter I'll discuss the motor boat as a 
matter of motion, sentiment and service. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
Great Lakes Motor Boats. 

ONE of the oddest motor boats I saw on the Great Lakes 
was just south of St. Ignace Island. The loneliness of 
the North Shore had had its effect on me, and instead 
of looking for a place to camp, I was keeping my eyes 
open for sight of some one. Then I came to Dampier, 
the Rossport fisherman, and his motor boat was a genuine curiosity. 
It was a tin boat, I think, and its sides came down in a regular "V." 
In it pounded a little motor and the boat rocked away across the 
water, tipping so far that I thought it would surely upset. It seemed 
top-heavy — but that did not matter. 

I could not but wonder at the enterprise of the fisherman who 
would bring a motor to that hard shore and build himself his own 
motor boat. He had designed and built the boat with his own hands, 
and if there were any imperfections in the design they did not really 
matter. The point was that he had built a motor boat and put an 
engine in it, in spite of tariffs and forty-cent gasoline and custom. 
With three or four horse power, he saved hours of arm toil. 

He towed around a punt — one of those heavy, clumsy looking row 
boats used by the fisherman, and when he came to his net he would 
cast anchor, tumble into the punt with his boy and run the gillnet — 
hundreds of yards of net — set the net again, and then return to the 
motor boat and go on to the next one. 

The lighthouse keeper at Lamb Island had a motor boat. I met 
him down the shore from the light, where he was gathering drift 
wood for fires, and perhaps timber for some new building or other. 
He had a boat about twenty-two feet long and five wide, which he 
used to tow sticks of timber. It was just an open launch, and I 
suppose it carried four or five horse power, but when he had dogged 
the timber and started away with it, the logs straightened out and 

183 



184 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

chased along with far more speed than he could have made with large 
sails and many oars. He went into the wind. 

But there was another motor boat which was interesting and a 
warning. The man at Thunder Cape light had a motor boat. It was a 
dandy, but the flanks of Thunder Cape offer no harbor for a motor 
boat, and it had to be anchored out where it caught the brunt of the 
storm, with the result that the boat was thrown up on the shore a 
wreck. 

Of course, in the summer months, many motor boats of various 
sizes find their way into Canadian waters. There are those motor 
boats, for instance, which slip across the line, pick down a deer or 
moose or other game, and return with it for a feast on the American 
side. On the other hand, there are the swift little boats which the 
smugglers use in making their ferries of whiskey and furs and other 
goods. 

Just the other day I read that some one was going to put a 90-foot 
motor boat on the Great Lakes — spend I don't know how many thou- 
sands of dollars just on the pantry — galley, I think they call it. This 
is just to show that while one may get a motor for $35.00 or so and 
build the boat himself out of seven doflars' worth of lumber, one may 
also put everything he has, including all his time, into a motor boat. 

Of course, most men buy in motor boats what they can afford 
rather than what they would like to have. It isn't good business, or 
good sport, however, to buy what one doesn't need, just for the sake 
of having it. The outdoor man would better think quite a while before 
buying a boat to use in his own business. 

There is a prospector named Ross Hamilton on Lake Superior 
working back from Otter Bay, sixty miles from any where except 
Otter Island Light. Hamilton has a motor boat about twenty-five 
feet long with an engine of about eight horse power. I met him down 
near Pilot Harbor, piking for Otter Bay with a load of supplies — 
about a ton — and an expert to look over his claims back in the 
wilderness. 

Now, he had an ideal outfit for the work of prospecting and 
trapping. It wasn't so large but what he could haul it out on the 



Great Lakes Motor Boats. 185 

beach, and up into the woods by means of tackle for the winter. He 
could carry all the supplies that he needed, and he could run the engine 
and steer the boat himself. 

This, then, was the boat for the lone prospector. It was about 
eight feet wide, and had a cabin in which he could sleep, and the power 
of the engine was ample for the service demanded. He could get 
seven or perhaps eight miles an hour out of the boat. Its shoal draft 
enabled him to run into the numerous shelters and harbors along the 
shore and, of course, he would not venture out into the wide water 
in a blow. 

On a long, open shore, where the wind has a full sweep, where 
the waves throw themselves against the sand and stone, one must have 
a boat that he can land and run up the beach in a hurry. Thus the 
canoe, the skiff, the canvas boat are safer and better than the boat 
which one could not get up the beach in time to weather a squall. 

Curiously enough, there are many lake men who have neglected 
this one feature of the open water — the wind. The launch and the 
motor boat appeals to them. The Canadian government has supplied 
lighthouses with motor boats, and there wasn't a vestige of shelter at 
the lights for the boats. If one's camp is in the open — then better have 
the old-fashioned arm-power boat. But if there is a good harbor, 
there is no economy quite like the motor boat. 

Take for example the men who trap the lake marshes and up the 
creeks from the little bays, miles away from home. Trapping com- 
monly begins a month or six weeks before the freeze up, and sometimes 
much longer. In the trapping, the little motor boat carries the traps 
to the ground in less than half the time it takes to row, and the man 
arrives there fresh for the work of putting down the traps and taking 
up and resetting. The motor boat, with a little skiff towing behind, 
covers ten miles where with a row boat one could not cover four miles. 

In such trapping as muskrats, where the number of traps well 
placed means a certain catch, if one can put out four hundred traps 
instead of one hundred, the advantage of the motor boat is seen in- 
stantly. The saving in arm power means also a direct income in furs. 
Moreover, the motor boat is so much larger and is so mugh faster and 

11 



186 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

more seaworthy, that one is able to cover marsh in weather which 
would compel the skiff man to remain at home, else run chance of 
drowning. 

It is worth while to get a good engine, all the users of the motor 
boats say. One should have ample power, too. The reason for 
having the ample power is not so much for speed as it is for safety. 
I remember that down on Chesapeake Bay, six or seven years ago, a 
friend of mine sold his twelve horse power engine and installed a four 
horse power on a thirty-two foot canoe (the big log canoe of the bay). 
The little engine would drive the canoe along in good fashion, almost 
as fast as the twelve horse power. Some models of boats will go just 
so fast, and then all the power in gasoline would hardly get them 
going faster. The difference in the running was found when the boat 
went into the wind. It would hold its own with the big power, where 
with the little power it would yaw around and either sink or go ashore. 

A fast boat is not needed in the ordinary traveling of an outdoor 
man. The fishermen take six or eight miles for their work. That is 
an economical speed; a high speed costs money, more than it saves. 
The trappers of the North Shore, the men who get into the fur pockets 
and pick up thousands of dollars, are beginning to get motor boats. 
They used to depend on canoes, and then came the era of skiffs and 
sail boats. Most trappers now use the sail boat, a craft twenty to 
thirty feet long; but these are rapidly being discarded for boats like 
Ross Hamilton's little cruiser. Billy Newman, Richardson, Game 
Overseer Nuttall — an old-time trapper — all agreed that the motor boat 
would knock the sail boat out of business. 

The reason is that the gales of wind are too big for sail boats and 
between the gales are fiat calms, in which the sail boat cannot move. 
The motor boat, unable to brave the terrible storms, is at its best in 
the day or two of calm between the autumnal gales. 

Now a motor boat that shoves along at the rate of eight miles an 
hour will make eighty miles in ten hours. In twenty hours it goes 
160 miles, and in thirty hours it goes 240 miles. That is to say, the 
boat would go anywhere along the shore of any of the lakes if it could 
find thirty hours of calm, and it is a rough fall indeed when the 



Great Lakes Motor Boats. 



187 




1.88 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

motor boat could not pick up a day's run a week between October 1 
and December 10, when the lighthouses usually close down. 

The motor boat is used by trappers at all such places as the 
Michigan marshes, the St. Qair Flats, among the Georgian Bay 
islands, and along the wild shores where they can find shelter for their 
boats. The motor boat enables them to cover islands which it would 
be foolhardy to visit in a skiff or even in a sailboat. 

Now ihe model preferred by the lake men of the type or class 
which finds its pleasure and its profit in the sales of furs, the odd- 
jobbing of various kinds — the occasional salvaging, fishing and knock- 
ing around known to most of us — is a motor boat as good as can be 
afforded, with a little cabin, fit to sleep and eat in, a cock-pit with a 
housed-in engine, covered by a low awning, easily taken down in a 
hurry. 

I see that one can build a thirty-five foot cruising boat, with a 
motor, for about $500. Such a boat would be large enough to go all 
over the Great Lakes, and into most waters along the Atlantic and 
Gulf Coast, provided the navigator wasn't one of the reckless idiots 
who takes all manner of chances to show off, to himself or to others. 

Now, the thirty-five foot boat is entirely too large for ordinary 
trapping work, and it is perhaps the large size limit for the man who 
lives aboard his boat and knocks around a lot alone. 

The chances are, judging from the little motor boats that I saw, 
in practical use, a twenty-five foot motor boat with a six horse power 
engine would be of ample size for darting to and fro from camp to 
store, from bay to creek to point, where are the hunting blinds and the 
traps and the ordinary nets or fishing of most out-door people. 

Of course, if the trapping is up some stream navigable for a boat 
drawing ten or twelve inches, but no more, the motor boat should be 
even smaller — less than twenty feet, if one works from the boat. But 
I noticed that nearly every motor boater towed a little skiff astern, 
and this skiff was used in running to the shore, or over shoal waters 
or into the marshes. Even the Indians of Canada are buying motor 
boats, and many of the hunting parties that go back on the great 
chains of lakes of various sizes in the wilderness are carrying with 



Great Lakes Motor Boats. 189 

them little motors which are fastened on the sterns of canoes and 
drive the canoes back into the wilds. 

A friend of mine who went into the big Canadian woods with 
a party whose luggage and people filled ten canoes, told me of their 
little adjustable motor, which was hung on the stern of a canoe and 
lines passed back to all the other canoes towed them all along as fast 
as they could have been paddled in the ordinary course of traveling by 
hand power. 

The little motor, of perhaps a horse power or a little more, carried 
them along mile after mile, without a break — it was a curious spectacle, 
no doubt, but it had its significance to every thoughtful out-door man 
the world over. There is no use lugging ones shoulders ofif to save 
the fifty or the hundred dollars necessary to put in a motor, if one is 
in waters where a motor would save time and strength. 

This advice comes curiously enough from one who rowed hun- 
dreds of miles up bays and lakes, but it happened that my ideas did not 
need a motor boat ; it wasn't a journey for profit or even to make 
expenses. Had I been after an income, it would have been better to 
take a motor boat without question, and looking back on the trip, I 
feel quite certain that I should have had a motor boat anyhow, except 
for one consideration : I desired to transport my boat by freight on 
several occasions, and the expense of that transportation for a motor 
boat would have been very much greater than I had toting my rowboat 
around. 

There are many things which people should consider in the boat 
question ; the main thing is the character of the waters to be navi- 
gated and the work to which the boat would be put. What would be 
just right for a man or two running a line of traps in great marshes 
would not do at all for the man desiring to live on board and going 
thousands of miles. The motor boat would be useless expense under 
many circumstances, and it would bring a hundred per cent, profit in 
others. 

Generally speaking, the motor boat is needed where there is ten 
miles length of navigable waters, if one's business extends along those 
waters. One could have a lot of fun with a little motor boat on a 



190 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

pond half a mile long, and there are thousands of motor boats profit- 
ably used on lakes only three or four miles across, not to mention on 
rivers where they serve as ferries. 

Neither speed, size nor beauty is the main thought to be consid- 
ered in the boats; the one great consideration in such a matter is 
whether or not it is needed. Of course, if one needs the fun of a 
motor boat, he needs it worse than if he merely needs it in his 
business. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
Great Lakes Fishermen. 

FISHING on the North Shore of Lake Superior is as lonely a 
life as that led by the trapper, and it is more dangerous. 
The trapper who watches out runs little danger, except from 
lost supplies and falls. The fisherman when he goes forth 
in his boat in the morning does not know whether or not, 
during the day, but that he may find himself caught in one of those 
terrible squalls which make life on great waters unsafe. He may fall 
overboard and drown. He may be wrecked on some gull rock and 
freeze to death in the early or late season. In a fog, he may be cut 
down by another boat and so find violent death. It is not even safe to 
be merry on a fish tug. Two men, the captain and engineer of a fish 
tug, were skylarking, and both fell overboard, leaving two boys who 
knew nothing of navigation or steam engines. The men drowned, 
and the two boys did manage to get to port, by steering and keeping 
the fires going. 

Lake fishermen of the North Shore type make .from $500 to 
$3,000 in the course of a season. Many of them are trappers, too, 
and as the summer fishing ends, they take up the burden of the trap 
line. Some are hunters, and in most of the fish tugs there are rifles 
and shot guns, and many the moose and bear and other large game 
that finds its way into the kettle and dripping pan because of the alert 
and double-acting men wlio make their livings over the deep waters 
and along the stone-bound shores of Lake Superior. 

The first requisite of the Lake fisherman is the license exacted 
by the Canadian government for fishing. The cost is $50 for the 
right to fish pounds and $10 for fishing so many gill nets. Then one 
must have nets, as gill nets and pound nets, and they cost according 
to size, quality and service. One cannot set nets, however, without 
boats, and the fishermen use all kinds of boats, from canoes and 

191 



192 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Great Lakes Fishermen. 1^3 

skiffs, for hand line fishing — mostly sports — through punts and sailing 
vessels up to gasolene launches and steam tugs. The tug is the chief 
article of transportation on the North Shore of Lake Superior. 

I was on two or three fishing tugs, and the life seemed, some- 
how, a life of sport and excitement. It could not be listed as a mere 
business. There are too many things in the life that bring one to 
the happy land of adventure and experience. 

There was the fish tug of the fur pirate of whom I told in 
Fur Pockets. He paid for the tug, they say, with the price of silver 
and black fox skins caught on a private preserve island. How could 
such a man as that fail to live exhilarating fishing? There was 
Captain H. Paulmart, at Rossport, who uses the offal of his fish to 
bait bears with, and who owns a team of sledge dogs with which he 
carries the mail up to the mines winters. Then Captain Will Dampier 
is woodsman, lakeman, fisherman and engineer. 

Very soon after pulling along the North Shore one learns that 
there the youths begin to fish early. The owner of the tug is likely 
to be the engineer and stoker, while his son, a mere nine-year-old lad, 
rides the wheel up and down, holding her. 

It is too bad, a fact that cannot be too often repeated, that 
those sons of tug captains and lake fishermen are not educated in the 
schools, while they also have the authority and the gravity of work 
across the wide waters, making them capable and resourceful far 
beyond their years. Stopping those boys from helping their parents 
work would not help the boys any, but the fathers who take their 
children out of school and keep them out of school should be made 
to give them, the education they deserve. 

Illiteracy is frequent on the North Shore; youths are growing 
up there unable to read a line, because their fathers, who cannot 
read or write, say that if they could get along without reading or 
writing, the boys should be able to do so. Of course, this is the folly 
of ignorance and obstinacy. The days when ignorance can make 
its way in the world are passing. The men who get ahead now, are 
the men who know books, who know arithmetic and grammar. 



194 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




i'^K^'" 



Great Lakes Fishermen. 195 

The North Shore fishing is, as in all the Canadian waters, 
much fished for market, falling away fast. The great fish trust and 
the fishermen and the government are finding their supply of fish 
failing, as in the salmon industry on the Pacific coast. The best of 
the fishermen find that even the higher prices paid for fish, and in 
the price of fish, formerly not bought, less money than they used to 
make in the days of old. They have fished the lake too close. They 
have wasted the capital of their industry. The government has al- 
lowed them to do it, too. In fact, when the government has tried 
to impose laws, the outcry from the fish district parliament members 
has sounded to heaven. There is plenty of room for improvement. 
Canada, waiting for the fish hatcheries of the United States to supply 
her waters with fish, finds that the fish of the American side do not 
migrate over to her side as much as she had expected. 

Canada's fish laws are the laws of a great, raw country, and 
one finds that there is much complaint about the administration of 
them. A fisherman who does not understand the subject is apt to 
get into trouble. I have told how in the Port Arthur District, a 
fishing license is good anywhere, while in the Soo District, the local 
officers issue permits for certain localities, as Lizard Island, or Pilot 
Harbor, or Gargantua. Sometimes a fisherman applies for a license, 
and the overseers, or whoever grant them, take so long in granting 
the permit that the fish season is over with ; then again some one 
else is fishing the locality where the unfavored fisherman desired 
to fish. 

One finds by listening and catching the drift of the talk of 
fishermen that there are things which make the men boil with anger, 
yet they cannot help themselves. There are whisperings of favor- 
itism, such as we have sometimes in our own outdoor life, that the 
politicians are the ones who profit; that the men with pulls have 
privileges not granted to others who have no pulls. If there are 
more fish along the North Shore, there is also more helplessness in 
coping with the political conditions. There are men like Overseer 
Nuttall of Port Arthur, who have been fishermen themselves, and who 



196 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




LOADING FISH BOXES. 



Great Lakes Fishermen. 197 

play fair, but one need not be assured that there are men and men 
in Canada, as well as elsewhere. 

The fish tug works out from some railroad port. Thus there 
are fish tugs that run out from Fort William and Port Arthur as 
far as Nipigon Bay (west end), and then from Rossport, Jackfish, and 
Port Coldwell. Up from Michipicoten comes a nsh tug. and others 
out of Michipicoten Island, and, I think, Gargantua, and sO' on down 
to The Soo. The Michipicoten fish all go down the lake to The Soo 
in a steamer line owned by a fish company, and this line works clear 
through The North Channel, Georgian bay to Owen Sound on Lake 
Huron waters, its business being to carry fish, but the freight and 
passenger business must almost make the fishing business clear profit. 
The boat I came down on carried about 170 boxes of fish, each box 
weighing around 150 pounds, into Owen Sound — one trip. 

The fish tugs are steamboats about 45 feet long, more or less. 
They burn driftwood gathered along the beaches, sawed up with 
buck and cross cut saws. They are owned by the fishermen, who buy 
them out of their "lucky summer" profits. Sometimes they mortgage 
their boats in slack seasons, and one hears of the boats being taken 
over for debt by the store-keepers who advanced supplies and tackle. 
Wherever one goes, one hears the stories of the store-keepers who 
foreclose mortgages and liens because of debts unpaid. It appears to 
be part of the necessity of business to insist on the return of money 
that has been loaned out, but somehow, the borrowers who are caught 
feel hurt when their debts, either because of hard luck or bad man- 
agement, at last overtake them. Being too ambitious, "biting off more 
than one can chew," appears to be the main cause of fishermen's 
troubles as regards debts. 

"I never buy anything till I have the cash to pay for it," one 
man said to me, and he was pretty well off. He had purchased his 
boat for cash in hand. Another man, who was as well off, apparently, 
said: 

'T didn't have a dollar when I bought this boat! Now I own 
it all." 



198 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

How could one draw any conclusions from that kind of thing? 
The net fishermen borrow money on their tugs to pay their help, 
when fishing is slack, and the fish companies borrow money on their 
tugs when receipts run behind expenditures, both hoping for better 
times before long. Sometimes better times come, but in these days, 
the fishing does not grow better, but usually grows worse. The 
fishermen who are surest to grow rich are the ones who never spend 
more than they make in time of poor fishing, and who never spend 
much more in time of good fishing than they do in time of poor 
fishing. If a man has a margin to put in the savings bank on a 
hundred pound of fish, he puts all he gets above what he spends when 
he gets a thousand pounds of fish. This, at least, is the way one fisher- 
man on the Bay of Quinte did, and he has $50,000; now after ten or 
twelve years fishing. 

The thing that cuts down the profits of fishermen on the lakes, 
aside from storms that cost them their boats and only too often their 
lives, is the fact that many of them do nothing in the winter but 
eat up their summer income. That is just as though a trapper trapped 
all winter and sat down and ate up his profits all summer, doing 
nothing. 

When I asked one fisherman why he didn't work in the winter, 
he answered proudly, that he was a fisherman, and that he wasn't a 
trapper, or Indian. The men who are growing rich on outdoor life 
on the North Shore trap winters and earn wages summers, perhaps 
as sailors, or as loggers, or teamsters, or on the railroad, or even 
working on tugs for wages. The saving fishermen of the summer trap, 
log it, buy furs, get government jobs, or build boats, work at odd 
jobs in winter. They make their living every week of the year, prac- 
tically, and what they do not need for living any week, they slap 
away into the bank, or bury it in a glass jar under a stone in the 
wall. I saw one fisherman who fished all summer long, catching 
thousands of pounds of fish. At the end of the season, with about 
a thousand dollars in his pocket, he goes to town, pays up his debts, 
and then starts in on a rearing, tearing time, which lasts him about a 
month. Then, almost if not quite, penniless, he retires to his home 



Great Lakes Fishermen. 



199 




200 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

and waits for spring and fishing, to go about gathering money for his 
annual spree. 

I do not know of any better way of living than that of such 
families as the Dicks. They have a home in town, where they live 
during the winter. In the summer, husband and wife and children 
move down to their island home, and there they spend the summer 
in the great outdoors. Of course, the children are fat as butter, and 
as happy as squirrels in a park. The women folks are some of them 
lonesome, however, .and that is a drawback. But if the woman is 
happy, and the man is making money and the children are well, there 
are no happier families than those of the fishermen of the Great 
Lakes who make their work a months-long vacation. If a man doesn't 
like his job, he would better quit it for one that he does like. I knew 
that thousands of men are outdoor men because they like the life, 
although they could easily hold down indoor jobs worth as much, or 
even make more money. 

It is a curious fact that most of the fishermen are white men, 
the Indians not fishing very much. No one seemed to know why this 
is. Fishing is not hard work, except for a few hours every other 
day or so. The Indians seem not to take to fishing, although they 
are said to know a good deal about fishing. They would rather pick 
berries, or let their women folks pick berries. I saw only one or 
two Indians fishing. The Indians of the better type, who are workers, 
are found working near towns, or in towns. They are unsteady, as 
a rule, but there are a good many Indians who have saved up hun- 
dreds of dollars from their wages and their trapping and their other 
work. 

One thing that has broken down the Indians is the liquor and 
food that they eat. In spite of the Indian List, which names the 
people to whom liquor must not be sold— habitual drunkards and In- 
dians — Indians find liquor, and the result is they go to pieces. Tuber- 
culosis has carried away thousands, and the remnant on the upper 
lake is a pitiful one, lank, hollow cheeked, muddy-faced and diseased. 

A good many of the great men — the men of money — who are 
important citizens in the North Shore Towns, got their start in fish 



Great Lakes Fishermen. 201 

and furs. There are some who merely made the outdoor life the 
stepping stone of the prosperity, having no real liking for the out- 
doors, except as it was an opportunity of making money. As soon 
as they made their start, they went into the land business, the timber 
business, to mining, or some other traffic of the kind, turning their 
backs on the lake. Others, however, hold fast to their ancient occu- 
pation, as, for example, the fisherman who not only supplies Fort 
William with fish but brings in thousands of tons of gravel and sand 
besides with which to build the concrete structures necessary for the 
growth of the coming North Shore city. 



]2 



CHAPTER XX. 
Great Lakes Fishing 

THE fishing on the Great Lakes is divided into many different 
kinds — gill nets and pound nets and seines being used 
usually in commercial fishing. There is some hook and line 
fishing, but perhaps the most of this is done for sport, and 
the money is made out of it by the indirect method of 
wages for guides, restored health, railroad fares, steamer fares, tips 
and board bills. 

There are hundreds of oeople who go to the lakes and spend more 
or less lengthy vacations fishing. At the foot of Lake Ontario, for 
example, at Cape Vincent, there is some of the finest black bass 
fishing to be had anywhere, and the business of catching bait for these 
sportsmen is an important one. The minnows are caught in a min- 
now seine, and they sell for $L50 a hundred. The state of New York 
exacts a license for seining — $10 a year, — and one must know con- 
siderable about minnows to catch them. 

The bait business is one that offers a good little opportunity to 
the men who are located right for supplying live bait. Wherever 
sportsmen go fishing for black bass, pike, or other fish using live bait, 
some of them are always willing to pay a fair price. Many and many 
man has seen a boy sent out to dig worms by visitors, never once 
realizing that if the boy or the man would go to work and keep on 
hand a good supply o^f bait, sportsmen would make it pay. 

There is a man at Cape Vincent who saw an opportunity and 
took it. His name is Leon Peo, a boatbuilder who continues a busi- 
ness established by his father. Sportsmen came there after black bass 
and muskalonge. They wanted the minnows, and for years, the de- 
mand for minnows was greater than the supply. All kinds of baits 
were tried, but the only efficient bait was live minnows. Some sports- 
men hired men, just to catch bait for them, besides paying a guide. 

202 



Great Lakes Fishing. 



203 




204 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

Then Peo took to taking orders for minnows, and sending out 
his own seiners to get them. The minnows were brought back in 
barrels and kept alive a day or two, but they would not live longer. 
They had to be caught fresh. Even when a long, wooden tank was 
built and water run into it through the village waterworks, the min- 
nows refused to live long. They died and they keep on dying, al- 
though fisheries experts have looked into the problem. It is thought 
that perhaps in capturing the minnows, they are injured, their scales 
being rubbed. Perhaps they are nervous and are scared to death ! 

In any event, I went out with the minnow catchers there at Cape 
Vincent, being more interested in the catching of bait by men who 
know that business than in seeing sportsmen catching a basket 
full of bass under the tutelage of a guide who, with his gasolene 
boat costs S8.00 a day. I think that I would rather pay a guide not 
to help me, than to pay one to help me. 

The bait catchers have to go out every day in season. The de- 
mand runs from a thousand to four thousand minnows a day, de- 
pending on the number of fishermen going out with rods. One sports- 
man will take out from 100 to 200 minnows in a live bait pail. The 
number going out on a day varies from seven or eight individuals 
to thirty or so, depending on the season and the weather. 

We started about 7 o'clock in the morning in a converted sail- 
boat about twenty-five feet long, and five feet or so wide. A hogs- 
head amidships, a little motor near the stern and the two fishermen, 
George Kilbourne and James De Jourdene, the box of seine, and 
myself comprised the outfit. 

The trip was five miles up the river into the lake and then out 
to Grenadier and Fox islands, and along the mainland, here and there, 
trying to find minnows. The minnow is a mysterious little fish, 
whether it is the Great Lake kind, or just the little brook kind, for 
it has notions and habits and it doesn't always appear where one 
most wants them. Not much is known about them. 

The fishermen think that the minnow is a deep water fish, and 
that it would not go up into the shallow water if it were not hunted 
ashore by the black bass and the other wolves of the water. The 



Great Lakes Fishing. 205 

minnows appear here and there in certain bays, shoals, and along cer- 
tain stretches, and the minnow seiner must know in what kind of 
weather they are most likely to appear at certain places. 

We went to the Elms first. Here there was a flat under water 
which contained some drift and some weeds. As we ran in, one 
of the boys jumped up on the little bow deck, as the engine was shut 
off, and with a long pole in hand, looked ahead into the water, poling 
the boat along. 

He was looking for minnows, and as I stood along side, wonder- 
ing what things his trained eyes were noticing, I saw at last a little 
silvery flash — the darting of a tiny fish as it turned short to go in 
another direction. He set his pole to stop the boat, the anchor was 
dropped overboard, and the two minnow fishers stripped down, put 
on bathing suits to go seining the minnows. 

The seine, 65 feet long, was paid over the side while the corks 
were kept up and the sinkers sunk, with no twist in the length of it, 
of course. The minnows were in about four feet of water, but 
with the seine, which is seven feet deep, they are caught in as deep 
water as eight feet, the men swimming around with the seine end 
on occasion, to get the net around the school of fish. 

They merely waded out, now, with the net paid over the side. 
They walked the ends of the seine around the school, pulled the 
loop in, and drew the bottom up till they had the fish in a pocket. 
Then they came along side the boat, and with buckets filled the 
hogshead half full of water, dipped the minnows up with a scoop net 
and a big dipper which was all there was to the gathering of min- 
nows. However, in the net were some black bass which had also 
hunted minnows, some perch and other fish of no service to minnow 
catchers, and these were thrown back into the lake. The theory 
is that the bass and other minnow eaters chase the minnows into 
shallow water, else the minnows would never be found along the 
shore, close in. 

The one haul caught about 2,500 minnows, or thereabouts — I 
didn't try to count them, but the men who catch minnows day after 



206 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Great Lakes Fishing. 207 

day all summer long get so they can estimate a school just as cattle 
men estimate a bunch of cattle or herders a flock. of sheep. 

The minnow seine was all the seine I saw hauled, but when I 
reached Lake Superior, I saw gill nets and pounds, where they 
catch the food fish. Gill netting is poor man fishing, but it isn't 
fool-man fishing, for there are many things one must know about 
the fish he would catch. The fish of the lakes have their runways, 
their feeding grounds, their spawning beds, their play grounds, and 
sometimes they are on one kind of ground, and some times they are 
on others, and sometimes the fishermen would give their boots to 
know where in the seas they are. 

As I rowed along the shore, I would come to little poles, with 
flags on them, sticking out of the water, and I knew that the poles 
were the buoys of nets. Sometimes the buoys were right smack 
up against the stone-bound shore, and they told me that sometimes 
they set the nets miles out to sea, by compass, with huge poles and 
great flags so that they can be found. Some of the boats go out 
three or four hours to put in deep water the nets for the roaming 
fish. 

Usually, along shore, the nets were placed out from the points 
of land, and across the mouths of bays, and, in the spawning season, 
in shallow water along the sand beaches where the fish are wont to 
lay their eggs; time was when the fishermen set their nets across 
the mouths of streams, up which the trout made their way to de- 
posit their eggs, but in late years the Government has been gradu- 
ally closing down on the practice of netting around the seining bed. 
The Gov'ernment sought to protect the Lizard Island spawning beds, 
for example : the fishermen made such a howl that the Government 
decided to allow only two fishermen to fish there; thereupon all the 
fishermen who did not have Lizard Island licenses set up a hundred 
times the howl of old; then there was a widening of the island. A 
government that plays favorites in such matters as granting fishing 
licenses for certain territories is worse off than one that plays a 
straight yes or no game. 



208 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 



IN THE GILL NET. 



Great Lakes Fishing. 209 

A very few fishermen clean up a vast territory, especially if 
they fish from tugs. One tug fishes fifty miles of the North Shore, 
running both pounds and gill nets. A man in a gasolene boat fishes 
ten or twenty miles of shore, and one finds men in rowboats ranging 
ten miles; the sailboat, which always must carry oars because of calms 
fishes but little more than the, rowboat, except the large ones. 

Gill nets are set in deep water — in a hundred fathoms of water, 
if need be, but pounds can be set no deeper than the poles reach. A 
gill net is started by dropping over the buoy and then the anchor 
line, the anchor being a large rock or railroad iron, well wired to 
prevent chaffering. Then the net goes over, one paying out the net 
while the other pulls, but on the tugs, the net is paid over the stern 
of the tug, two men catching the net, and straightening it out. Some- 
times the sinkers tangle up and the net goes over like a rope for a 
little ways. The punt set net is usually better set, yard for yard 
because in case of a tangle the punt rower stops to wait, but the 
steam tug is too unwieldy for that. However, a tug sets five miles 
of net while the punt sets only half a mile or so. The tug covers 
fifty miles of coast while the punt covers only six or eight or ten, 
not half as thoroughly. 

The good fisherman knows the lake bottom as well as the hunter 
knows his mountain ridge and the trapper knows his trapline. There 
are men who forget over winter all that they knew about the fish 
the summer before. There are fishermen who never take a chance, 
and there are fishermen who always take chances. If a man makes 
a great haul off some point in June, the next year he is likely to 
have forgotten whether it was May or July that he caught the fish. 
Perhaps he sets his nets off that point a month too late. 

Now the fact is, the fishermen ought to keep a note book and put 
down in that notebook all about all the fishing; good times with the 
bad times, places where he had bad luck at certain times and places 
where he had good luck. Fish travel one way at one season, another 
at another; catching fish isn't any hap-hazard game. It is a science. 
The difference between a successful fisherman and an unsuccessful 
one is simply the difference between know how and know why, 



210 



A Trip on the Great Lakes. 




Great Lakes Fishing. 211 

and don't know why. It isn't luck — despite the old yarn of "Fisher- 
man's Luck." 

If a fisherman had the results of his fishing, day and date and 
place and weather conditions, for ten or fifteen or twenty years, he 
would have only to compile the record and then he would find that 
on certain points, year aiter year, he had good luck within the 
range of, say, a month at certain places, and then the luck shifted to 
other places. I know that this is so because in my trout ifishing with 
ilies, the trout marched up from the deep holes to the foot of the 
rifts, and then followed one, two or three days of the best fishing 
of the season over the gravel shoals; then the fish got scattered 
over the rifts and took up the rift period of their summer; followed 
by the deep water and then the cold beds of summer. All this was 
according to the weather. But in the lake, where the temperature 
three fathoms down hardly changes, winter or summer, I was going 
to say, questions of cloudiness and sunshine, of food supply and 
schooling and scattering are found. Judging from what I have seen 
and heard, fishermen know a good deal less than they ought to 
know about their fishing, for the reason, chiefly, that they are handi- 
capped by the fact that they cannot study the fish the way one can 
study, say, muskrats. 

The gill nets are hauled by hand in punts, but some one invented 
a "net raiser" for the tugs, which runs by steam. The net raiser 
saves many an hour of toil. It is simply a steel drum with little 
"buttons" which catch up the meshes and lets go of them so that 
the net runs over the drum without slipping into the box. In 
freezing weather, the nets freeze up, but the tug men just stick a 
steam pipe down into the box, and in two minutes have it thawed 
out, ready to pay over. 

The pounds are set with pole drivers, worked by hand — a hard 
and painful job, this is, too. The lone fisherman sets few pound 
nets! They are placed where the fish are supposed to come around 
points, but the bottom 'has to be soft enough to take the poles, and 
the current must not be strong enough to carry out the pound. There 



212 A Trip on the Great Lakes. 

are great currents in the lake, due to winds. The fog traveler must 
not forget these currents, for after the wind the set is back again. 

I suppose every one knows what a pound is ; it is simply a net 
fence that turns the fish out toward mid-channel to get around. The 
end of the lead fence is a funnel that leads through a small hole into 
a large net corral or box, and when the fisherman comes along, he 
hoists up the funnel, then hoists up the box and scoops the fish out 
of one corner. In season, they catch thousands of ducks and loons 
in the pounds. Once in a while, they catch an otter in a gillnet, two 
or three hundred feet under the surface. 

I may add, that when a man goes down in Lake Superior, he 
never comes up. Few of those drowned in the lake ever appear, if 
they happen to get down three or four fathoms. Many and many a 
man has gone out into the lake, never to return. One hears about 
these tragedies whenever he asks about the fishing, or travels with the 
fishermen. 

The boys on Dampier's fish tug were skylarking around. 

"Don't do that!" Dampier called to them, "I hate to see them 
romping around," he added, "Lots of men go overboard that way; 
this lake's water is cold. Before we could back, like as not they would 
be down — and they'd never come up again!" 

Tragedy is close to the laugh on the North Shore fishing waters. 

END. 



SCIENCE OF FISHING 



SCIENCE or 
ri3HING 



A NEW BOOK TELLING HOW TO CATCH FISH; FOR 

THOSE WHO HAVE CAUGHT THEM, AS WELL 

AS THOSE WHO NEVER HAVE. 

The book contains 258 pages of practical information 
on fishing for fresh water food and game fish, also 
those of salt water. There are 
no superfluities, but each chapter 
has been condensed and put into 
a simple language that is easily 
understood by all, and there is 
more information in this book 
than in any other book on fishing 
of its size ever published. It de- 
scribes the fish, tells where they 
are found, tells their habits, and 
how, when, and where to catch 
them, also the kind of tackle that 
is used for each fish. The book 
is profusely illustrated with half- 
tone cuts from photograplis and 
drawings, showing all kinds of 
rods, reels, and other tackle, the 
d various fish, diagrams showing 

^ij ^^-- - _J how to make rods, nets, etc., and 

how to handle the tackle in 
various kinds of lishing. There are over a hundred illus- 
trations in all. The book is 5x7 inches, printed on 
good quality of paper and divided up into twenty-two 
chapters as follows: 



"^^ 



I Remarks on the 
"Gentle Art." 
II Rods. 

III Reels. 

IV Hooks, Lines and 

Leaders. 
V Flies. 

VI Artificial Baits. 
VII Landing Nets, Gaffs, 
Tackle Boxes, Etc. 
VIII Bait-Casting. 
IX Flv-Casting. 
X Surf-Casting, Troll- 
ing, Still Fishing, 
Etc. 
XI Use of Nat u r a 1 

Baits. 
XII Handling the 
Hooked Fish. 
XIII Fishing for Black 
Bass. 



XIV Fishing for Trout 
and Salmon. 
XV Pike, Pickerel, Mus- 
kellunge & Pike- 
Perch. 
XVI Sunfish, Carp, Cat- 
fish and Suckers. 
XVII Fishing for Tarpon 
and Tuna. 
XVIII Fishing for Other 
Sea Fish. 
XIX Making, Repairing 
and Caring for 
Tackle. 
XX General Inforation. 
XXI Commercial Fish- 
ing. 
XXII Distribution of Fish 
— Good Places. 



The Most Practical Book on Fishing ever Published. 
PRICE, CLOTHBOUND, POSTPAID, 60 CENTC. 



HuirrBR 




The above iHiustralion shows a front cover of 

Hunter Trader -Trapper 

Monthly Magazine, published by A. R. Harding, Columbus, 
Ohio, who also publishes. Dookc on Trapping and Out-o'- 
Door SportSj bringing out new ones continually. Latest 
booklet descriptive of magazine and jooks published will 
be sent free upon application. See following pages. 



Hunter 
Trader 
Trapper 

0s its Name Indicates is a Magazine of Information 
for Hunters, Traders, Trappers and Out-o-Door 
People. 

If you are interested in hunting, trapping, 
raw furs, ginseng, raising wild animals, taxidermy, etc., 
you will fmd tliis magazine of interest and value. The 
magazine is published monthly and treats on the fol- 
lowing subjects: Steel Traps, Where and How to Set; 
Baits and Scents ; Proper Season to Trap ; How to 
Skin, Stretch and Handle Furs; New Ways to Capture 
Mink, Fox, Wolf, Marten, Beaver, Otter and CDther 
Shy Animals ; Raising Fur Bearing Animals ; Growing 
Ginseng and Golden Seal; Training Night Hunting 
Dogs; Leading Fur Markets; London Raw Fur Sales; 
Fox Hunting and Hounds ; Coon Hunting ; Letters 
From Old Hunters and Trappers, etc. 

The Editor is a man of long experience in handling 
raw furs and trapping. The articles published and photos 
used are largely from those who have had actual exper- 
ience with trap, gun and dog— you will enjoy them. 

The magazine contains from 128 to 200 pages each 
month, averaging about 160 each month or 2000 pages 
a year. About 700 illustrations are used each year. 
The magazine is printed on good quality paper and the 
subscription price is only 



y 1 m\)\} 8L JL GSiV TEN CENTS 
A. R. Harding Publishing Co., Columbus, O. 



Camp and Trail Methods 

Interesting Information for all Lovers of 
Nature. >Vhat to Take and What to Do 



By E. KREPS 

This book, one of the most practical works on woodcraft 
ever written, was brought out to fill a vacancy in outdoor 
literature. There are numerous 
works on this subject but they were 
written for the sportsman and the 
city camper, therefore, the informa- 
tion given in them is not of value to 
the practical, outdoor man. CAMP 
AND TRAIL METHODS is intended 
for woodsmen, country people, 
mountain men, prospectors, trap- 
pers and the hardy outdoor people 
in general, the people who read the 
H-T-T, each and every one of 
whom the author is proud to call a 
brother, for he is one of their kind. 
To them this work will not only be 
interesting but also be valuable as it 
gives information which cannot be 
obtained elsewhere. The work was 
rini in installments in the H-T-T 
but has been revised before putting 
in book form. Much information has been added and many 
new illustrations have been used. It contains 274 pages and 68 
There are 19 chapters as follows: 

Snowshoes and their Use. 
Snowshoe Making. 
Skis, Toboggans and Trail 
Sleds. 




illustrations 
1. 



Pleasures and Profits of 
Camping. 

2. Selecting a Camp Outfit. 

3. Clothing for the Woods. 

4. Pack Straps, Pack Sacks, 

and Pack Baskets. 

5. Cooking Utensils, Beds 

and Bedding. 

6. Firearms. 

7. Hunting Knives and Axes. 

8. Tents and S'helters. 

9. Permanent Camps. 

1.0. Canoes and Hunting Boats, 



14. 



Provisions and Camp 
Cookery. 

15. Bush Travel. 

16. Traveling Light. 

17. Tanning Furs and Buck- 

skins. 

18. Preserving Game, Fish and 

Hides. 

19. Miscellaneous Suggestions. 



The book is attractively bound in cloth and printed on nice 
paper, size 5x7 inches. 



Price, Postpaid, Cloth Bound, 60 Cents. 




CANADIAN WILDS 



Tells about the Hud- 
son's Bay Company, 
Northern Indians and 
their modes of hunting, 
trapping, etc. 

This book contains 277 
pages, sizes 5x7 inches, is 
printed on good quality 
heavy paper, not illus- 
trated, and contains 
thirty-seven chapters as 
follows : 

The Hudson Bay Company. 

The "Free Trader." 

Outfitting Indians. 

Trackers of the North. 

Provisions for the Wilderness. 

Forts and Posts. 

About Indians. 

Wholesome Foods. 

Officer's Allowances. 

Inland Packs. 

Indian Mode of Hunting Beaver. 

Indian Mode of Hunting Lynx and 
Marten. 

Indian Mode of Hunting Foxes. 

Indian Mode of Hunting Otter and 
Musquash. 

Remarkable Success. 

Things to Avoid. 

Anticosta and its Furs. 

Chiseling and Shooting Beaver. 

The Indian Devil. 

A Tame Seal. 

The Care of Blistered Feet, 

Deer — Sickness. 

A Case of Nerve. 

Amphibious Combats. 

Art of Pulling Hearts. 

Dark Furs. 

Indians are Poor Shots. 

A Bear in the Water. 

Voracious Pike. 

The Brass Eyed Duck. 

Good Wages Trapping. 

A Pard Necessary. 

A Heroic Adventure. 

Wild Oxen. 

Long Lake Indians. 

Den Bears. 

The Mishap of Ralson. 
This book Is from the pen of a Hudson's Bay 
Officer (Martin Hunter) who has had 40 years ex- 
perience with the Hudson's Bay Co — from 1863 to 
1903, During that time he was stationed at difCerent 
Trading Posts in Canada, 
paid, 60 cents. 



I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII, 
XIV. 

XV, 

XVI, 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII, 

XXIX, 

XXX, 

XXXI, 

XXXII, 

XXXIII, 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI, 

XXX vn. 



Price, cloth bovnd, post 



Fur Farming 

(REVISED EDITION) 

A Book of Information on Reusing Furbearing 
Animals, Telling All About Enclosures, Breed- 
ing, Feeding, Habits, Care, Etc. 



FUP ^ 



FARMING 



THE first editior of this book is ex- 
hausted, and the present revised 
book is far more complete than the old. 
It is the recognized authority on raising 
all kinds of furbearing animals, and all 
of the questions that are asked regard- 
ing the business are answered in detail. 
It is the only guide for those who are 
contemplating the raising of furbearers 
for profit, and its accurate descriptions 
of the animals and their habits, when in 
the wild state, make it interesting and 
valuable to all. 

The information has been secured 
from reliable sources, mainly from those 
who have already experimented exten- 
sively in this line. A part was also 
taken from the United States Govern 
ment reports of their investigations. 

The new book contains 237 pages, 5x7 inches, printed on good 
paper, with 35 illustrations from photographs and drawings : also 
a new cover design which is shown above. It contains 14 chap. 



, as 


follows : 






I. 


Supply and Demand. 


VIII. 


Mink Raising, 


!L 


What Animals to RaisCo 


IX„ 


Opossum Raising. 


III. 


Enclosures. 


X. 


Muskrat Raising. 


IV, 


Ji^aws A.ftecting Fur 


XL 


Raccoon Raising. 




Farming, 


XII. 


The Beaver and the Otter 


V. 


Box Trap Trapping. 


XIII 


Killing, Skmning and 


VI. 


Fox Raising, 




Stretching. 


VII. 


Skunk Raising 


XIV. 


Deer Farming 



The book is attractively bound in cloth. Price, postoaid, SO cents. 
Ac Re HARDING, Publisher, Columbus, Ohic 




Fox Trapping. 

A Book of Instructions Telling: 
How to Trap, Snare, Poison and 
Shoot. A Valuable Book for Trap- 
pers. 

—J Contains about 200 pages and 60 illustrations 
divided into Twenty-two Chapters as follows: 



1 General Information. 12 

2 Baits and Scents. 13 

3 Foxes and Odor. 

4 Chaff Method, Scent. U 
6 Traps and Hints. 15 

6 All Around Land Set. 16 

7 Snow Set. 17 

8 Trapping Red Fox. 18 

9 Red and Grey. 19 

10 Wire and Twine Snare. . 20 

11 Trap, Snare, Shooting and 21 
Poison. 22 



My First Fox 

Tennessee Trapper's 

Method. 

Many Good Methods. 

Fred and The Old 1 rapper. 

Experienced Trapper Tricks 

Reynard Outwitted. 

Fox Shooting. 

A Shrewd Fox. 

Still Hunting the Fox. 

Fox Ranches. 

Steel Traps. 



If all the methods as given in this book had been studied out by 
one man and he began trapping when Columbus discovered Ame-ica 
more than four hundred years ago, he would not be halt completed. 
CLOTH BOUND 60c., POSTAGE INCLUDED. 



/Wink Trapping 

A Book of Instructions giving 
many Methods of Trapping. A 
Valuable Book for Trappers. 

Contains nearly 200 pages and over 50 Illus- 
trations divided into Twenty Chapters as fol- 
lows: 




10 



General Information. 11 

Mink and Their Habits. 12 

Size and Care of Skins 13 

Good and Lasting Baits. 14 

Bait and Scent. 15 

Places to Set. 16 

Indian Methods. 17 
Mink Trapping on the 

Prairies. 18 

Southern Methods. 19 

Northern Methods. 20 



Unusual Ways. 
Illinois Trapper's Methods. 
Experienced TrappersWays 
Manv Good Methods. 
Salt Set. 

Log and Other Sets. 
Points for the Younj Trap- 
per. 

Proper Size Traps. 
Deadfalls. 
Steel Traps. 



The methods as published are those of experienced trappers from 
all parts of the country. There is money made in catching mink 
if you know how. After reading this instructive book, you will 
surely know. If you only catch one more prime mink it will pay 
for the book several times. _ 

CLOTH BOUND 60c., POSTAGE INCLUDED. 



t 



HUNTING DOGS. 

Describes in a Practical Manner the Training:, Handling:, Treat>^ 

ment, Breeds, etc., Best Adapted for Night Hunting:, 

as well as Gun Dogs for Daylight Sport. 

This book contains 253 pages, 5 
X 7 inches, 45 illustrations show- 
ing the various breeds, hunting 
scenes, etc. 

The author, Mr. Oliver Hart- 
ley, in his introduction says: "As 
if hunting for profit, night hunt- 
ing for either pleasure or gain 
and professional hunting gener- 
ally had no importance, writers 
of books have contented them- 
selves with dwelling on the study 
and presentation of matters relat- 
ing solely to the men who hunt 
for sport only. Even then the 
Fox Chase and Bird Hunting has 
been the burden of the greater 
per cent, of such books. 






Chapter 



Part One — Hunting Dogs. 



Training— For Squirrels 
and Rabbits 

Training the Deer 
Hound 

Training— Specific Things 
to Teach 

Training — Random Sug- 
gestions from Many 
Sources 



1. Night Hunting 7. 

2. The Night Hunting Dog 

— His Ancestry 8. 

5. Training the Hunting 
Dog 9. 

4. Training the Coon Dog 

6. Training for Skunk, 10. 

Opossum and Mink 
6. Wolf and Coyote Hunting 

Part II — Breeding and Care of Dogs. 
Chapter ^ 14. Breeding (Continued) 

11. Selecting the Dog 15. Peculiarities of Dogs 

12. Care and Breeding and Practical Hints 

13. Breeding 16. Ailments of the Dog 

Part III — Dog Lore. 
Chapter 18. The Dog on the Trap 

17. Still Trailers vs. Ton- Line 

guers. Music 10. Sledge Dogs of the North 

Part IV — The; Hunting Dog Family. 



American Fox Hound 
The Beagle Dachshund 

and Basset Hound 
Pointers and Setters- 

Spajniels 
Terriers — Airedales 



20. American Fox Hound 24. Scotch Collies. House 

21. The Beagle Dachshund and Watch Dogs 

25. A Farmer Hunter — His 
Views 

26. Descriptive TabljC of 
Technical Terms 

The contents show the scope of this book and if you are 
at all interested in hunting dogs, you should have this 
work. The book is made up not only from the author's 
observation and experience, but that of scores of success- 
ful night as well as daylight hunters. This book will not 
interest the field trial dog men but is for the real dog men. 
who delight in chases that are genuine. 
Price, cloth-bound, postpaid, 60c. 

A. R. HARDING PUB. CO., Columbus, Ohio 



Bee Hunting 

A BOOK OF VAI,UABI,B INFORMATION FOR BFE 
HUNTERS. Tells How to I/ine Bees to Trees, Etc. 

The following is taken from the Author's 
Introduction to BEE HUNTING 




M 



ANY books on sports of Tarious 
kinds have been written, but 
outside of an occasional article 
in periodicals devoted to bee litera- 
ture, but little has been written on 
the subject of Bee Hunting. There- 
fore, I have tried in this volume — 
Bee Hunting for Pleasure and Profit 
— to give A work in compact form, 
the product of what I have learned 
along this line during the forty 
years in nature's school room. 

Brother, if in reading these pages, 
you find something that will be of 
value to you, something that will 
inculcate a desire for manly pastime 
and make your life brighter, then 
my aim will have been reached. 

The book contains 13 chapters as follows : 

I. Bee Hunting. 

II. Early Spring Hunting. 

III. Bee Watering— How to Find Them. 

IV. Hunting Bees from Sumac. 

V. Hunting Bees from Buckwheat. 

VI. Fall Hunting. 

VII. Improved Mode of Burning. 

VIII. Facts About Wne of Flight. 

IX. Baits and Scents. 

X. Cutting the Tree and Transferring. 

XI. Customs and Ownership of Wild Bees. 

XII. Benefactors and Their Inventions. 

XIII. Bee Keeping for Profit. 

This book contains 80 pages, paper cover. 
Price, postpaid, only 25 cents. 

A. R. Harding Pub. Co., Columbus, Ohio 



NV^ 



18 \9\i 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




016 097 816 8 



